Night Vision
by Idream3223
Summary: Eric 'The Northman' is a late night talk show host on WKDED in Shreveport. His call in show, Night Vision, has brought him into the supernatural spotlight when a local vampire becomes a fan. When her desire for him brings her out into the night to claim him as her own she is interrupted by a fiery assailant who ends her life and removes Eric's memories of the event.
1. The Werewolf

**Night Vision**

 **Eric 'The Northman' is a late night talk show host on WKDED in Shreveport. His call in show, Night Vision, has brought him into the supernatural spotlight when a local vampire becomes a fan. When her desire for him brings her out into the night to claim him as her own she is interrupted by a fiery assailant who ends her life and removes Eric's memories of the event. His need to remember and understand what happened takes him down a dark and winding path into the world of the supernatural where he meets a woman who takes his breath and his heart with her fiery magical ways.**

 **TB/SVM-Pre the Great Revelation-Eric & Sookie-AU-OOC-NC17**

1\. The Werewolf

Eric Northman leaned in close to the microphone and sighed as he searched for how to say what was on his mind. He had been hosting Night Vision at WKDED in Shreveport for six months now. The show ran from midnight to 5AM Monday through Friday. His audience were people who worked the night shift and chronic insomniacs. His topics varied, often selected on the fly or triggered from some event that he had been forced to endure himself in his everyday life. He liked his show, he liked his town. He had been happy since he moved her from Los Angeles, abandoning an overdone market in an overdone town. No one would find him here and he was fine with that. He liked being just a voice on the airwaves. He could be anyone and everyone here and he liked that best of all. Everyone had more than one side to them and he needed space to be whoever the fuck he wanted to be.

"I was thinking today about life the universe and everything," he said, his deep sexy voice traveling away and into the foggy night outside. He chuckled, "I know, you're all surprised to hear that I was thinking, but it's true. I found myself wondering about the greater mysteries of life. Who are we? What are we? Where did we come from? Where are going? Is there a plan? Is it our plan or someone else's? Are there things out there in the dark that we have yet to find, things that watch us, covet our hum drum lives and long to have that existence for themselves? Are there things that go bump in the night that we aren't smart enough to be scared of?" He stopped and took a sip of his coffee before going on.

"When I get in this mood I sometimes think of something that I saw when I was a teenager. It was right after I had gotten my driver's license and I had been coming home around midnight from a friend's house. It was a deserted back road that crossed over a mountain, tight with curves, trees close on both sides of the road so the only light was from the headlights of the beat up piece of shit I was driving. It was stick shift, and I had taught myself to drive it just a few weeks before." He chuckled again, lost in his memories of his first truck and his early driving experiences. "I was still afraid to listen to the radio because I wouldn't be able to hear the engine wind up telling me that I needed to shift up a gear. I was still nervous as hell about driving in general and driving a stick shift in specific. I was scared to stop on a hill, because I would ride the clutch to stop from rolling back, and the clutch was already worn when I got it. Every time I did it, I would ball up in a knot inside just knowing that it was going to give out or even worse I was going to panic like an idiot, stall it out and roll back in whatever unsuspecting soul who had the misfortune to be behind me.

"I was enjoying the drive that night, no one on the road but me, windows down sliding glass behind me open. It was midsummer and it had been hotter than hell all day, but now in the dark the air whipping around me was cool and refreshing. It dried the sweat on my body and made my shirt billow out a little and flutter, tickling against my skin. I was feeling oh so cool and proud of myself. You know that feeling you have when you're a kid and you do something that you didn't think you could? Or even better something that some know it all adult has told you that you can't do." He smiled at his invisible audience.

"Yeah, you know what I mean. Every one of us has been there at some point. Putting up with that is what makes those moments of accomplishment and freedom so freaking sweet." He sipped his coffee again and wished he had a cigarette. He had quit five years ago, but the need, the desire to have one in his hand when he was behind the mic had never faded. Sometimes the taste of coffee, which could only be improved with a cigarette made the need almost unbearable, but he couldn't quit the coffee, too. A man needed some pleasures, goddamnit! He had thought about getting one of those uber popular electronic cigarettes but knew it would just be a gateway drug back to the real thing.

"So, wind in my hair, foot to the floor, topping out at about a whopping 35MPH going up the mountain I was loving life. Seriously, I can recall very few times that I have felt anything near that level of perfection this life. Maybe the first time I got laid. Yeah, maybe then, when it was all about me and I was too inexperienced to fully understand that I had some obligation to ensure my partner's pleasure as well as my own." Nodding to himself, feeling his lips curl into a smile as he recalled his sticky seventeen year old fumbling with Andrea. "Yeah, maybe then. Anyway, I was cruising along when suddenly on the side of that mountain road I saw a werewolf." He raised his hand. "Now, I know some of you are rolling your eyes and dismissing me out of hand. You can do that. I will never know for sure if turn the station right now, but I shit you not, it was a werewolf.

"It was huge and ugly. The fur was mottled in color black and brown and it moved with such contempt that it almost didn't get out of the way. It moved like it hoped I would slow down, or that I would hit it so it could hit me back. But what I will never forget is the eyes. They glowed in my headlights, not like regular glow, I mean like red in color, reflecting back something that wasn't from the outside, no it was something on the inside. I knew, I felt like I was looking through a doorway into the face of something that would leave me unhinged if I looked to close. It felt…other. It felt like it didn't belong in this world. It made the hair stand up in the back of my neck and my gut twist just to see it. The wrongness of it, there on the side of the road, as if to say…you don't know anything, _anything_ of what goes on in the night.

"Suddenly, what had been cool on my hot body became cold and I was shivering. Suddenly, I was sure I would do something stupid and stall out there and it would come after me. I panicked and let up on the gas, not wanting to hit it, but definitely not wanting to stop. I down shifted and pushed the accelerator down almost the floor causing the pistons in my old truck to bang hard. That made me panic even more. I wanted to close the windows but was afraid to try and let go of the stick shift or the steering wheel.

"As I got closer it slunk off into the trees and disappeared into the inky black night. I left the windows alone and drove for home with adrenaline coursing through me, making me shake even harder than the cold feeling that had settled into my very bones. By the time I was home in bed I had started trying to convince myself that I had imagined the whole thing. Most of the time even now I let myself believe that. I sleep better that way. But sometimes though, when I am busying thinking my deep thoughts I go back to that night, to that moment and I still feel it in my bones, the wrongness of what I saw. I think of how that does not fit in with the images we reinforce every day of what this world contains. I think that we only think we know everything and that arrogance will be the end of us on some back road when we least expect it." He sighed then, and looked at the clock.

"It's 1AM and this The Northman coming to you live from WKDED in Shreveport. Do you have a story like that you want to share? Put on the coffee and give me a call at 555-WDED. Coming up now we have a new one from Alice + The Machine, What Kind of Man and then we have a word from our friends down at the Gas-N-Sip, your all-purpose stop and go shop, located on the corner of Summerville and Third. Stop in today for gas and a sip!"

He pressed the button to start the music and then sat back in his chair. Glancing at the phone lines he saw three of the six lit up. He glanced out the studio window to see his producer Lafayette Reynolds on the phone setting up his callers. From the look on his face Eric had stirred the crazy pot just right with his story. That suspicion was confirmed when Lafayette flipped him off and rolled his eyes as he talked whoever was on the other line. Eric chuckled.

"I done told you, not to do that shit!" Lafayette's voice filled the studio. "You start up with some weird shit like that and get them to start calling in. You only get to talk to the ones that can form sentences! And why is that? Hmmm?"

"Because you protect me from the crazy," Eric said in a tone that indicated he was having this conversation for about the thousandth time now.

"Damn right! Don't you do this no more! I mean it!" Lafayette went back the phone lines and continued to roll his eyes so hard that Eric thought he might have to whack his head on the board to get them come back to their rightful positions.

He ran his hands through his hair. He didn't plan these things, he just opened his mouth and the words came out. He had been doing this job now for almost ten years, first in Los Angeles and now here and he was good at it. When he listened and spoke the words that felt like they needed speaking he reached people. Fuck, sometimes maybe he even helped them a little. That was why he did this. That why he wanted to keep doing this.

It wasn't always the weird shit, the paranormal shit, sometimes it was just everyday ordinary people shit and that was fine too as long as he was able to speak the words he felt like he needed to speak when he needed to speak them. That was part of why he left Los Angeles. The station he had worked at there had wanted him to stick more mainstream topics and cater to a certain demographic. He had been wildly popular even on the night shift and they had paid him well, but he felt his freedom slowly being squeezed off, first with their censure of his topics and then with the ideas of how he needed to monopolize on his GQ good looks to promote the station during the day.

Eric Northman was not a day person. He also didn't give two shits about how marketable his appearance was, he was more than meat and the way they treated him made him feel like he needed a shower whenever he went into the studio there. So, he had started looking for a job. He had found this one, on the other side of the country where the station manager told him he could do whatever the fuck he wanted to do from midnight to 5 Monday through Friday. This time he had gotten it in his contract, no daylight appearances, and no promotional pictures of him to drive ratings. He did his show, he recorded ads for local businesses and then he went home. Period. The pay cut had hurt like a mutherfucker, but money wasn't everything.

Lafayette liked to have something to bitch about, so despite his theatrics over the kind of callers he was fielding right now he was loving every minute of it. What the fuck else was he going to do at 1AM on a Tuesday morning?

The commercial came to an end and the On Air light came back on above the door. "Let's take some callers now and see anyone else out there has a story to share. Caller you are on Night Vision with The Northman, what's on your mind tonight?"

"Northman," a female voice came over the line. Eric immediately rolled his eyes and cut a glance at Lafayette who was holding up a sign that said, 'pay back, here's your bitch!'.

"Lorena," Eric said trying to sound professional and not disgusted by the sound of her voice. She had been calling in for a month and he told Lafayette to stop putting her calls through. At first he had thought she was just a fan of the show but he had quickly learned that she was fangirling for him and not Night Vision. She had asked him out both on and off the air, promised him things that he found more nauseating than titillating. He knew crazy psycho trouble when he heard it and he wanted to give it a wide fucking berth as he traveled on and around it.

He had dealt with fans before in Los Angeles. He knew how to handle them and how not to. Even the slightest encouragement was too much. He had to be firm but professional. He heard her take a breath but he cut her off. "Do you have a story to share on the supernatural tonight, Lorena?"

"As a matter of fact I do, Northman. I wanted to talk about vampires."

"OK, what about them?"

"Do you think they are real?"

"This is your call Lorena, so the question is what do you think?" She laughed, making the hair stand up on his neck.

"I think that I might call back tomorrow night and ask you again."

"All right, Lorena, thanks for calling." He disconnected the crazy woman and moved on to the next caller. The rest of the night went on without incident. He had a few crack pots that wanted to talk about everything from UFO's to government conspiracies, but even so at the end of the night he felt like he had produced an interesting show that let people air out their concerns and thoughts even if their ideas were way out in left field as far as he was concerned. It could have gone better, but it could have gone worse, too.

He handed the mic off to Jamie and Jeff for their morning show, told Lafayette good night and headed out in the thin remainder of night, stretching his long frame and yawning as he crossed the parking lot to his car. He was wondering if he should stop at the Waffle House for some breakfast before heading back to his place when someone grabbed him from behind and spun him around.

"What the fuck?" He was facing a small brunette woman, not bad looking but quite strong. In the dim lights of the parking lot he thought he saw fangs in her mouth, but dismissed it as a trick of the light. When she spoke he felt a chill run over him.

"Northman."

"Lorena" he said, dread in his voice. She smiled wider to be recognized and rubbed her body against his.

"Right in one. You are as clever as you are handsome." Fucking crazy fangirls. He jerked his arm from her grasp and looked around for the security guard that was supposed to be out here. He was nowhere to be seen. Figures. Rather than carry on and accidentally encourage her further he turned and started moving for his car again. Somehow she got in front of him again. "Not so fast, sexy. I have something I want to show you."

"Not interested," he ground out through a locked jaw, contemplating how bad it would be to throat punch a woman and then drive away. _When I grow up I wanna be that kind of asshole_ , he thought as he accepted that he was not the kind of guy to strike a woman. Her smile widened again and this time she turned her head so the dim light reflected on her fangs. This bitch had fangs, and apparently disposable income if she could pay for that kind of dental work. He looked in her eyes, preparing to gentle her down from the edge of Crazy Land and he felt his desire to get away from her fade.

"Yes, you are interested. You are so interested you are going to let me taste you. Then we will spend the night deciding what happens next." Everything sounded very far away now and he felt his body relax in her grasp. "You desire me, Northman, more than any woman you have ever wanted before. You're hard for me now, so hard it hurts." Distantly he felt his body respond to her words and he was compelled to pull her close and kiss her as he rubbed himself against her. "Yes, like that, lover," she moaned as he moved to kiss her neck. He was about to pick her up and press himself between her legs when he felt a sharp pain in his neck and then a slow draining sensation that took him even further from the parking lot outside the WKDED.

Suddenly there beside them was another woman. He saw a hand reach in and light up, covered in red flames a split second before it wrapped around Lorena's neck. A sharp shrill scream split the night and his fugue when Lorena screamed and jerked away from him, trying to escape the woman. "Let me go!" she screamed as her head caught fire and her face started to burn.

Eric fell back, landing hard on his ass, a look of dreamy terror on his face. The woman held Lorena as she jerked, burning and screaming. He saw a look of pure savage joy on the woman's face as Lorena burned. Distantly, he thought he should do something, even if it was only run away, but even that was beyond him. Before his very eyes Lorena burned, faster and faster until there was nothing of her left but a pile of ash at the woman's feet. She turned to him then waved a hand and he thought he heard her say, "Sleep." His eyes closed and he was out.

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The alarm clock woke him at 6PM the next night just like it always did. He got up and showered, just like he always did. He shaved just like he always did before pulling on his black jeans and t-shirt, just like he always did. He fixed himself some toast and a cup of coffee and sat down to channel surf just like he always did. He kept feeling like he was forgetting something important but for the life of him he couldn't figure out what it was.

He went to the grocery store. He ran a couple of errands. He came home and put the groceries away still feeling like he was forgetting something. In the moments when his mind was caught up in the tasks he was performing a question would rise to the surface. It played over and over like song lyric stuck in his mind, he heard it but he wasn't listening.

Before he got to the studio he was saying it out loud, not thinking of it, and still not hearing it either. He was stuck on a loop. It was burning up from the depths of his brain, occasionally accompanied by random images of fire, and blond hair. He was humming it when he sat down in his studio chair. Over and over his mind was asking the same question.

 _Why did she save me?_

But any memory of who _she_ was, or _what_ she had saved him from was just not there. The memories had been taken from him and now he could only pick at the empty space they left behind.


	2. 500K13

2\. 500K13

 ** _20 years ago_**

500K13 ran through the mountain terrain with one ear trained toward the banging of clanging of Eric's truck coming up the mountain and one ear on the rustling and growling she could hear miles ahead of her. She had been following since he left his friend's house ten minutes before, tracking him from a safe distance, performing her primary function to protect, as well as her secondary function which was to remain unseen.

She was to watch him from the shadows, protect him with her very life if necessary. It was what she had been made to do. It was what she had been doing since the day they brought him home from the hospital wrapped in a tiny blue blanket sixteen years ago. Tonight she had made a fatal error in judgement, letting her emotion get the better of her.

Watching from the woods outside his girlfriend's house she had seen them tangled together working their way toward fucking, not there yet, still taking slow tongue twisting runs at it before backing down, panting and wild eyed. She could tell that before too long they would not pull back, that soon the deep kissing and heavy petting would take Eric and the girl all the way to where they were trying so hard to get to.

Her hands had clenched at the sight and the knowledge of the inevitable adventure before them. One that she could only endure from the shadows at his side as she kept her covenant. It was not supposed to bother her. This was not her function, but she was locked in for the ride.

Eric Northman was tall for a sixteen, nearly seventeen year old boy. Graced with blond hair, blue eyes and a smile that held her captive whenever she saw him bestow it on those around him. Did they know, she sometimes wondered, that his smile was a gift, or did they just take it for granted like they did every other perfection they encountered in this world?

5001K3 was sure that it was every bit the gift that sunny care free days were, but like those care free days his smile was never for her. She watched the boy place his large hand on the girl's breast evoking a moan of pleasure from her that made 500K13 feel envy strike at the heart of her.

Unable to stem the tide of emotions she had walked away for the first time, ever, leaving him alone and unguarded. She had been broken from her wandering reverie through the woods when she heard his truck start, her head coming up sharply, and her heart beat accelerating from the adrenaline flooding her body.

Performing quick calculations in her mind, glancing at the stars to confirm her position she had turned away from the sound and started running toward the mountain that had been at her back. If she moved fast enough she could reach the top, cross down and catch him on the winding mountain road to follow him home through the dark. Her quick thinking had eased her tension as she moved listening to him as he followed the road the long way around.

It had been a good plan until she had sensed the werewolves between her and the boy. There were three of them, in wolf form waiting for him on the road where she planned to catch up and follow. Now she had to get there before he did, because she knew they too were waiting to rendezvous with boy whose eyes stole their color from the sky itself.

Self-recriminations filled her mind again. Protect! You have failed to protect! Not yet, her heart told her mind and she increased her speed pushing herself to her very limits. Extending her senses she knew the leader was ahead of the other two wolves. She also knew that they had planned to stop her and allow their leader time to take out the boy. Not slowing she came in at a blur, hands lighting up with demon fire. Firing a bolt at the wolf loping toward her on the right, hitting him head on and knocking him back she turned to face the one on the left. He leaped toward her, teeth and claws flashing as he pinned her with his massive body.

He ripped at her sides, she felt the blood run down just before she felt the tingle of healing start. Grunting with the effort she flipped them over on the ground taking the top of his muzzle in one hand the bottom in the other she broke his jaws, and then ripped them apart feeling the body go limp under her immediately.

The first one was back now fur still smoking from her fire bolt. He was circling her, working up his nerve to charge her again. She dropped down on all fours and looked into his eyes. Telepathically she drilled into his mind seeking information and control.

 ** _Get the fuck out of my head!_**

She pressed deeper. There were only three of them, on a mission that even their master the Dark Fae King did not know about. Good. They were hoping to kill Eric and regain their packs honor for some sin the King was angry about. Warlow had not sanctioned this kill! She could handle the last easily if she got there in time. She pressed deeper, why hadn't Warlow sanctioned this action? She saw it then, him with his Council whispering in the shadows of the wolf's mind. Dread filled her.

He's got another plan!

The wolf howled as she shredded his mind to find out what it was. He dropped to the ground seizing, reduced to a mindless nothing from her violent invasion. She was moving before he hit the ground. She stopped on the edge of cover and watched the wolf stare into Eric's headlights. She hesitated. If the wolf did not attack she should remain under cover of the trees.

 ** _What the fuck is that?_** She heard Eric think a bare moment before the scent of his fear met her on the cool night breeze. **_It looks like a werewolf!_** He fumbled with the gears of the truck and then sped away as fast he could in the night when the wolf crossed the road and slipped into the trees planning to take him a little further down the road.

500K13 moved faster than she had ever moved before, pulling all the power and magic out of her genetically engineered DNA. She was the best of demon, fae, were, shifter, vampire and human combined into a single form by science and magic. All of their strengths and almost none of their weaknesses. A marvel of engineering from the year 2065 and sent back to make sure that Eric stays alive.

As soon as the truck passed 500K13 blurred across the road and descended on the wolf with her eyes glowing, her hands blazing and her fangs down. The wolf tried to fight and she let him for a few minutes, enjoying the release of her anger as she pummeled and ripped at him.

 ** _The Dark King will snap you like a twig!_** He snarled into her mind. She growled and punched him a few more times as she rifled through his mind looking for more information about Warlow's real plans for Eric. There was nothing there. Grunting her rage, she ended her self-indulgence and ripped his throat out with her teeth. Hot blood spurted down her front as she took a few deep gulps wincing slightly at the taste. Were blood was always bitter to her. She dropped the body and moved again to follow the truck through the night.

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She sat on tree limb outside Eric's window in the form of a snowy white owl watching him get ready for bed. She felt relief at seeing he had made it home safely. She could even hear that he was convincing his sleepy mind that it had all been something he imagined. Soon his thoughts turned back to his girlfriend and what they had almost done tonight at her house.

She became lost in the images of his mind, letting him sweep her in, letting it be her he was imagining touching with his large gentle hands. She heard him with her mind and her ears when he sighed, his breath speeding up as he caressed himself. Envy cut her again, but she made herself stay and wait until he was asleep, trying to pretend that she didn't care the whole time wondering why they had engineered such a flaw into her being. Feeling _anything_ was a liability. Feeling _this_ was crippling!

She could not protect him if all she could think of was how much she wanted to be that girl. These feelings triggered her anger unleashing all the rage that was hiding inside her. None of the species that made up her form were known for being even tempered. In fact, most were hot blooded driven by desire and emotion.

"You're going to feel things," a voice had told her in the dark. It was her first memory in the lab where she had been made. "You will feel them more deeply and more exquisitely than any being in history ever has. At first it will seem like a liability but if you can find a way to embrace it, then it will make you stronger than you can imagine. You will be able to do anything, my little 500K13."

Shaking off the memory she checked Eric again, and then the wards she had placed around his house to keep him safe at night. He was invisible when he was inside them. Then she flew off to handle getting rid of the bodies she had left in the woods beside the road.

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 ** _Present Day-3 weeks after the attack at WKDED_**

"I don't know what's going on with you, but you gots to get a grip, Eric!" Lafayette looked at him with concern over a plate of eggs, holding his coffee cup in both hands, elbows resting on the table. "In the last few weeks you have been saying and doing some strange things, my friend." Eric dropped his gaze to the table. He knew Lafayette was right. Tonight had been the tipping point. He rubbed the back of his neck and blew out a long sigh.

"I know. I know, but something happened to me and it's making me crazy to not remember what it was!"

"Well, tell me about it, what do you think happened?" Eric clenched his fists in frustration, shaking his head.

"I don't know! That's just it. It feels like something was taken away from me, something that I need back but I don't know what it is or how to find it!" Lafayette set the cup down and looked at his friend concern in his eyes.

"I can't imagine how that must feel, but you can't keep asking people night after night if they know anything about what happened. You can't keep asking them why she saved you, when you don't even know who she is or what she saved you from. It makes you sound…crazy, Eric." He chuckled.

"I could live with sounding crazy if it got me what I needed." He looked at Lafayette turning serious. "I know in my bones it has something to do with the security guard that has been missing from WKDED since that night. Is there any word on what happened to him?"

"No, he just disappeared. The cameras outside the station show he was at his post and then he was gone. The police called me earlier this week to question me about his known associates and stuff. I could tell they are as clueless as we are."

"They called me, too and I agree they have no leads. It probably frustrates me more than them at this point."

"Look, I know you wouldn't hurt anyone, but if you keep going on about missing time and no alibi it is possible that they will think you were involved in his disappearance." Eric raised a brow. Fuck, he hadn't thought of that. The last thing he needed on top of going crazy was being a suspect in the missing guard's disappearance.

He was still thinking over how to get his shit back together and let this go when he noticed two tall broad guys come into the diner. Something about them made the hair stand up on the back of his neck and once again he was back in the truck on that mountain road looking at something that was just…wrong. They were dressed in jeans and military boots with long black trench coats. They felt like trouble.

Lafayette followed his gaze and made a small sound of appreciation. Turning back to Eric he licked his lips and waggled his eyebrows. "Nothing like little candy in the morning," he said, starting to rise. Eric grabbed his hand and pulled him back down.

"No, something's not right with those guys."

"I know!" Lafayette assured him patting his hand. "They needs me between them to make one of those reverse Oreos I love so much!" Eric felt a small smile curve his lips at Lafayette's flirtatious tones. His friend was into dudes and he supposed they were attractive, but at the same time there was something about them that made him feel sure that nothing good would come from his friend making an introduction.

"Wait," Eric said quietly, sure that something big was about to happen. Something that would change things for him forever. It was the scariest thing he had ever felt, but it also excited him. Just then the door opened again and a blond woman walked in. Eric felt his brain jitter. He knew her. He didn't know her.

 ** _Why did she save me?_**

She had a long coat on as well, hers beige while the men wore black. She kept her eyes on them moving toward Eric's booth. She grabbed his arm pulling him to his feet never slowing down. From the corner of his eye he saw the men turn in unison, coats sweeping back to reveal large guns that flipped up in perfect sync to aim at where he had been sitting and Lafayette still was. Her hand was cutting into his arm and she had pulled him all of three steps before he dug his heels in. "Save my friend," he said leaning down to her.

Fire flashed in her eyes and disbelief flitted over her face. Then she nodded and turned back extending her hand out. The men started firing then, Lafayette screamed and grabbed his head sure it was about to explode, but it didn't.

Instead, Eric saw the rain of bullets stopped by some invisible force field, falling to the floor before they reached him. "Come with me if you want to live," she said to Lafayette her hand still extended toward him. The gunmen shifted toward the sound of her voice, their lips moving but their words too quiet to catch. Something like a mist came from them toward the force field that was protecting them from the bullets raining down.

"NOW!" she screamed, pushing Lafayette into action. He scrambled to his feet grabbing her hand, she turned him to stand beside Eric, her back to the assailants now. The mist had gotten through the invisible barrier and was circling around her and he thought he saw her wince. Then everything went upside down and a light so bright it blinded him appeared around them. The sound of bullets faded away and though he could see nothing he knew they were no longer in the diner.

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A/N I know, I know, but I always, always really wanted to say, "Come with me if you want to live." Forgive me, I couldn't resist.


	3. What's In A Name?

**_Moments before the attack at the diner…_**

500K13 in the form of a robin perched on a wire outside the diner watching Eric and a man through the window of restaurant. She had listened to his broadcasts since the attack and she was worried that he was spiraling into madness as a result of her interference with his memories. She had been over it thousands of times but was sure that she had done it correctly and that it had been the only choice open to her. Still, his suffering was affecting her deeply. She was trying to find some way to fix it when she saw the two large Dark Fae get out of an expensive looking car and head inside.

Her tiny bird heart froze as her mind raced through first what this would mean and second what she needed to do to get him out. She left the wire and headed to the alley beside the diner where she came back to her normal form. Glancing down at her naked curvy body she had tapped her magic again and summoned a trench coat, probably because it was the first thing her mind had conjured after seeing the assailants. That coat however was the only thing she too the time to manage, pulling it around her and tying the belt tight she started for the door.

An attack in broad daylight was not anything she would have expected, but she had been expecting _something_. The death of the vampire and Eric's increasing instability on air would be drawing attention to them. She felt regret press in for what she knew had to happen next but did not let it cloud her vision as she opened the door and walked in her focus only on Eric.

The Dark Fae were standing at the counter and as soon as she walked by the jig would be up, as they said the movies. Inhaling as she passed them she winced inside. She could smell the iron and silver in their weapons. She saw then the magnitude of her errors and she missed a step as she came toward the man she had spent the last thirty-four years protecting. It seemed his greatest liability was her. Part of her mind started working out what happened beyond this moment, while part of her stayed here to handle what was about to happen.

Not slowing her pace she grabbed his arm pulling him to his feet. They had barely taken three steps when she sensed the Fae turn behind her, smelled their weapons come out and heard Eric tell her to save his friend. Tapping her magic again she created a force field around the attractive young black man in the booth as well as Eric. Did he know that she had to do what he told her, no matter how stupid it was? This was part of why she was to remain in hiding. If he discovered that she had been engineered to respond to his commands and that she was not able to override them no matter what she would lose an important edge that could save his life.

Still, she had no choice. He had told her to save his friend, so she turned to him and offered a hand. The man was hunkering down screaming as the bullets started to fly. The shield held, but she heard the Fae murmuring a counter spell that would break through it in moments there was no time. She would have been able to get Eric out the door at the other end if he hadn't insisted she save his friend. Now their only choice was one that would leave her drained and unable to defend him further for an extended period of time. She hated teleportation, it was an emergency escape tool only, one that risked her very life but this definitely qualified as an emergency.

Her mind racing as she screamed at the man in the booth she tried to think of some place they could go and hold up for a least a few hours. Weighing the risks she positioned them both in front of her, offering what cover she could to both of these large men and dug deep inside her to tap the power she would need to do this. Just as they started to teleport she felt several bullets pierce her back but she held on and kept her focus.

The sound of shots faded as the moved through space. She felt herself being torn apart which was how this normally felt, but the additional mass of Eric and his friend added a deeper shade of pain. It took the space of a breath for them to rematerialize in her safe house on the edge of Shreveport. It was one of several that she had set up for just such an emergency when they had moved here six months ago. It was a risk, they knew about her, her ammunition had told her that more clearly than anything else could have. Any bullet would kill a mortal but special bullets of silver and iron could only have been for her. _Damn! Damn that fucking vampire to hell for exposing them!_

Lafayette was still screaming a high pitched scream when she felt the floor solidify beneath her feet. Her first move was to slap him into silence. The last thing she needed was more attention. Immediately, he fell silent. Eric watched her silent but with large eyes, she spared a small thought that he also seemed calm given what had just happened. She moved to check the widows and then the wards. Nothing outside waiting for them and with the wards still intact she knew that there was nothing inside waiting for them either.

"We stay here for now," she said to them. She saw them nod, her tone leaving no room for questions. Assured that he was safe she let herself feel the pain of her wounds and the exhaustion in her very cells from the teleportation. Her eyes fluttered and she took a step to sit down before she fell down. Again, she missed her mark, crumpling toward the floor as her eyes rolled back in her head.

Eric caught her before she hit the floor, kneeling with her in his arms as he stared at this face that he still believed that he did and didn't know. He smoothed the hair back from her face and then looked up at Lafayette questions banging in his eyes.

"Well, fuck it all," Lafayette said, running a hand over his head, a small smile playing on his lips. "Guess you ain't crazy after all."

"Guess not," Eric said looking back down at her. He felt something on his hand beneath her and pulled it up to see blood. "She was hit!" He was on his feet immediately picking her up and moving toward the small cot in the corner of the room.

"I'll call 911," Lafayette pulled out his phone.

"No!" Eric cut him off. "If we need to hide here then it means we can't call anyone."

"This don't make no damned sense!"

"Shut up and help me!"

"Fuck!" he shoved the phone back in his pocket and moved toward Eric who had undone the belt of coat and laid her on her stomach to see her back. He registered that she was naked but was so focused on seeing where she was wounded it barely made a dent. Her back had three bullet holes in it. Two of them were smoking, like her flesh was burning. Tremors ran through the smooth flesh of her back indicating that she was in great pain even if she was not conscious to feel it.

Eric froze. He knew rudimentary first aid but this looked like she would need surgery. "See if there are any medical supplies in this place," he barked out. As Lafayette moved away to search he saw something in wound that wasn't smoking like the others. It was small and shiny and it was working itself out of her flesh like it was alive. A moment later a bullet fell to the cot beside her body resting against her skin. The contact started her skin smoking again, he could see a burn forming, not thinking he picked it up and threw it across the room. Looking back down he was amazed to see the burn heal in a matter of seconds. Gasping, he looked at the hole it had exited and saw that wound too was nearly closed. He watched as it finished, leaning in close to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.

 _Who the hell is this woman?_

He looked at the other two wounds. They were still smoking and now he knew why. The bullets lodged in her flesh were burning her, but they were not coming out like the other one had done. He glanced around helplessly for something to remove the bullets. There was nothing. Looking down again at the tremors of pain shaking her body he didn't think about it he just pressed his lips to her wound and sucked hoping that it would assist her body in expelling the bullet. She jerked beneath him but he sucked harder and felt a small sense of triumph when the bullet came out into his mouth along with a massive mouthful of her blood.

He turned to the side and spat it all out, gasping for air from the shock of what he had done. He wiped his mouth and then pressed his lips to the other wound applying the same suction. This one was deeper and he had to suck several times, accidently swallowing several mouthfuls of her blood before it popped into his mouth. He spat the last mouthful out and wiped his mouth again, watching as the wounds started to close immediately.

He gagged a little from the taste in his mouth sitting back on his heels. "I found some gauze and some peroxide," Lafayette said coming back to kneel at his side. He looked from Eric's blood stained lips to the now perfect skin of the woman's back and fell back on his ass.

"Thanks," Eric said in a dreamy distant tone as he took them from Lafayette, slowly rising to his feet moving to the kitchen area to wash his hands and face of her blood. A million things ran through Lafayette's mind about what he realized Eric had done and the risks involved in it, but saying them at this point would serve no purpose. If she was infected with something that could kill Eric he had already exposed himself to it. Now his warnings would only serve to make him feel bad for being willing to risk himself to save her.

Behind that rational thinking came the terrifying wonder of her healing ability and like Eric before him he wondered what this woman really was. After a few minutes of deep focusing breaths to calm himself he covered her naked form with her coat and followed Eric into the kitchen. He was leaning on the sink, head down between his shoulders.

"Well, I guess you got some of your answers," he said, trying to find the silver lining in what had happened. Eric chuckled.

"And about a thousand more questions." There was nothing to say to that.

32XXXXXXXXXXXX23

They were sitting around the kitchen table not talking when she stirred on the cot, sitting up quickly and looking around. She let out a loud sigh of relief when she saw Eric still there, still safe. Letting the coat fall to the floor she moved immediately to the windows checking the outside and the wards again. Still intact.

She looked back to the men at the table and then moved toward them with purpose in her stride. When she got there she looked at Lafayette and said, "Sleep." Immediately, his eyes closed and he slumped in his chair. She turned to Eric, her face blank and opened her mouth to speak.

"NO!" he told her rising to his full height over her. "Do not make me sleep again." Her hand dropped, her gaze did not.

"We are past that for you," she said, with some regret in her tone. He frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that we have to leave this place and we have to do it now. It is no longer wise to keep the truth from you."

"The truth about what?" She laughed a genuine sound of amusement.

"The truth about the things you have been seeking your whole life, but with a vengeance since the vampire attack at your station."

 _Vampire? She said vampire?_

"Yes, I said vampire," she said out loud answering his thought. "Lorena was a vampire. A stupid one, albeit, but still a vampire."

"She attacked me?" 500K13 sighed and moved toward him her hand upraised. He stepped back.

"I mean you no harm."

"I don't want to sleep and forget again!"

"You won't. Trust me." For some reason he did. He let her hand come up to the side of his face and he felt a shock run through him when the hole in his mind filled in with vibrant color and sound. He saw it all, Lorena's attack, this woman saving him, her burning hands, her telling him to sleep. Then she let him see the rest of how she had driven him home and put him in his own bed before she took his memory. She even set his fucking alarm clock for him before she left. The part that killed him though, was the soft kiss she had placed on his sleeping forehead before she had left closing the door softly behind her. The look on her face in that moment was heartbreaking.

When the memory was restored with sideboards and additional information he looked down at her. She had thick blond hair that hung to her midback, soft lips and possibly the most perfect and beautiful breasts he had ever seen. His awareness of her nakedness ran through him like wildfire hitting all the sweet spots in him. She gasped.

"You've had my blood!" she accused him, frown coming down on her face.

"I sucked the bullets out of your back."

"Why would you do that?"

"You were hurting." She opened her mouth again to say something but stopped herself. "I thought you were dying." _I may well have been_ , she thought sourly but again did not speak.

"How can you tell I had your blood?"

"I can feel you now."

"What does that mean?"

"It's…you…we…" she stopped. She had rarely spoken to anyone on thirty-four years and now she was being called upon to explain things that were complicated and needed some serious back story before he would begin to understand.

"Is it bad? Is that why you can't tell me? Is it going to kill me?"

"No," she rushed to reassure him. "You'll be fine. It's just that I can feel your emotions now, and it is…disconcerting." Understatement of the century. It had taken her years to master her own emotions when it came to Eric Northman and now for the prize she got to master feeling his. Fabulous. Still, it could be an advantage. She let herself feel the tie between them now, the resonance of it and the way he felt. Desire was the biggest thing barreling to her. He desired her! Her mouth opened in a perfect O of shock. He took a step closer. She took a step back.

 _This is my punishment for wanting him and being forced to bury it. Now I get to bury his, too._

"What's your name?" His tone was soft and seductive.

"500K13," she said. His lip curled up.

"That's not a name."

"Yes, it is," her head came up and she locked eyes with him. "It's my name." A ghost of a memory came to him of something he used to do as a child. A game he played with himself, a code he invented for himself that he never told anyone else about. It involved the transposition of letters for numbers, while leaving some letters in place. It wasn't a one for one it was more specialized than that.

Doing some quick transposition in his head he swapped out the 5 for an S, the 00 for OO, left K for K, 1 to I and then last 3 for E. 500K13 was SOOKIE.

"Sookie," he whispered, his hand coming up to cup her face. "Your name is Sookie."


	4. Valuable

She stepped back letting his hand fall. She dropped her head, not able to find the words but her actions clearly said, don't touch me. He frowned not understanding why she was reacting this way. To him she felt, surprised and oddly, scared. What would she be scared of in his hand on her face? He looked at her again, looking for what he had obviously missed. She was _different_ , but she didn't feel _wrong_ like the wolf had on the mountain or like the men in the diner. She felt…he stopped, unable to find the word. It bothered him that she was scared of him. "So, what now?" he finally asked in a quiet voice. She kept her gaze on the floor.

"Now we have to leave here."

"This house?"

"This city."

"To go where? This is where my life is."

"Was."

"What do you mean?"

"They have found you now. It's not safe here anymore."

"Who? Who has found me?" She sighed and shook her head.

"You will see."

"I'm not moving an inch until you tell me who the hell you are and who those men were in the diner." Her head came up sharp.

"You must! I'm supposed to keep you safe!" He let out a rough breath and ran his hand through his hair.

"This doesn't make any sense! What about my life? My job? What about-"

"None of that matters if you are dead." There it was. It shouldn't have needed saying, he had been in the diner, and he had seen the men with guns, the shells that covered the floor as they tried to hit him. End him. Finish him.

"I need to know what is going on, please." He wanted to touch her again to make her feel what he was feeling but then he remembered that she could feel him already because he had accidentally swallowed some of her blood. He stopped trying to be calm and let his fear rise up through him. She gasped at the size of it.

"Please, Eric. You don't have to be scared. I am here." She stepped closer to him, her eyes locked with his.

"I don't know what it means that you are here." She dropped her eyes and nodded. "Can you help me understand?" She looked up and bit her lip, her brow furrowing.

"Some, I think. What you need most we will have to travel to get to."

"Please, Sookie, just show me what you can. I need to understand." Sookie, she thought hearing it for the second time. It was her name now because he said so. He didn't know but he had named her before. Would it help him to see that? Would it give him what he needed so that they could move before it was too late and they were found again?

"If I show you what I can, will you let me take you away from this place?" Maybe, he thought. He nodded scared in a different way now. What would she show him? She held out her hand to him. When he took it she led him to the cot and sat down with him beside her. She reached a hand up again to touch his face.

She showed him her first memory.

 _"You're going to feel things. You will feel them more deeply and more exquisitely than any being in history ever has. At first it will seem like a liability but if you can find a way to embrace it, then it will make you stronger than you can imagine. You will be able to do anything, my little 500K13."_

That voice, Eric thought. I know that voice. He let it go as he watched her training. She was amazing! Bolts of fire flew from her hands, blowing up targets in the lab where she had heard the voice. He watched her punch through thick planks of wood and concrete with her tiny hands, her expression fierce and scary as she had been when she killed the vampire in the WKDED parking lot.

He saw her face down five opponents, taking wounds that healed almost instantly before she left her adversaries like bowling pins on the floor. He saw her fangs, and still found himself enraptured in her beauty. She was other, definitely other but she belonged.

 _"Your mission, 500K13 is to protect Eric Northman from the moment of his birth in 1981 until you can no longer do the job. Protect him with your very life if necessary because he must survive. He must survive no matter what!"_ That voice again. Always just a voice coming from the very walls around her. Who was that?

He saw his face on a monitor in her lab. He was older than he was now. Silver just starting in his hair, more wrinkles around his eyes and a scar that went from his right temple to the edge of his lips. His eyes told of miles that he had yet to travel. The older Eric's eyes told of things that this he was afraid to look at!

 _"Protect him. Keep him alive, and if you are forced to step from the shadows and into his life, then give him this."_ The image shifted again and he saw a long crystal of the purest blue reflecting light. _"Make sure that no one other than Eric himself ever knows of this, and that no one touches this but him. Care for this second only to the man himself. Do not fail, little one. He needs you to keep him safe."_

The images faded then and he found himself sitting on the cot with the still naked Sookie beside him. She looked at him expectantly, finally asking. "Does that help? Is it enough for you to understand and let me do what we have to do now?"

"It's a start. But tell me, where was that? What did you show me?"

"It was the place I was made. Where I learned to be who I am and what I was made to do." He frowned again.

"When was that?"

"2065." He leaned back from her, his mind trying to comprehend what she had told him. It was too much. He was shaking his head back and forth struggling to breathe.

"Bend over, Eric. Put your head between your knees and take some deep breaths." Not knowing what else to do he did as instructed. After a few minutes he started to level off and feel less like he was going to pass out.

"Who's after me? Who was in the diner?"

"Emissaries of the Dark Fae King. His name is Warlow."

"Uh-huh. And what's a Dark Fae?"

"A race of supernaturals that have been here for a very long time."

"S-supernaturals?" She nodded. "Um, are you a…uh 'supernatural', Sookie?"

"Yes, I am a genetically modified supernatural. I was made to have all of the strengths of several races and almost none of their weaknesses."

"So, there's more than one then? More than just the Dark Fae."

"Yes."

"Why does Warlow want to kill me?"

"You will know that when we get the crystal."

"Right. And where is that?"

"I hid on the property you grew up on."

"Back in Virginia?"

"Yes."

"And that's where we are going now?"

"Yes." There were millions of questions he wanted to ask, but his brain was slush.

"What about Lafayette?" He looked around at his still sleeping friend. She shrugged.

"I will take his memory and when the Dark Fae take him there will be no information for them to retrieve."

"No, we take him with us."

"Eric, you are my priority. I can't protect you effectively if I have to take care of him, too."

"These guys aren't fucking around, Sookie. They nearly killed him today just because he was with me. Collateral damage they call that." She looked at him, still not understanding. "I can't let him die because of me. Maybe when we get this crystal it will tell me what to do. How to save him." She shrugged. It might, but Sookie doubted it. There had been no mention of Lafayette in her training in 2065. His importance was doubtful, his survival less than likely.

"What if he doesn't want to come with us?" Eric shrugged. Lafayette didn't strike him as the suicidal type.

"We owe him the chance to decide."

"We owe him nothing. I have saved his life once already." He looked at her exasperated. Was she a supernatural or a machine? Fuck, was there any difference between the two? What was a supernatural anyway?

"Wake him up. I want to talk to him."

32XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX23

An hour later the three of them were in a stolen black SUV on I-20E headed into Mississippi. Eric had stretched out in the back, purposefully separating himself from the source of all his questions to try and get his head straight. He was going home that was a big enough thought to deal with in itself. Lafayette was in the passenger seat with Sookie driving.

He hadn't been surprised when his friend had decided a road trip was preferable to another run in with his Oreo cookie boys. Distantly, he heard Sookie and Lafayette arguing over the radio station. It was so normal that it almost made this road trip seem like it was a vacation and not a run for your very lives kind of thing. They finally settled on something and after a moment Eric heard Billie Holiday singing Ain't Nobodies Business through the speaker behind his seat.

 _If I should take a notion, to jump into the ocean  
Ain't nobody's business if I do  
If I go to church on Sunday, then cabaret all day Monday  
Ain't nobody's business if I do_

The image of jumping into the ocean followed him down as he slipped into sleep and felt himself swept away into dreams brought on from the blood he had swallowed earlier. He would have slept sooner if he had realized that some answers could have been found there in the dark red cells he had swallowed while trying to save her life. The story of Sookie was engraved on every cell of her body and now it was engraved on him as well.

He saw a baby boy taking his first wobbly steps from a vantage point that was almost level with the little boy himself. "Come on, Eric! You can do it!" That was his mother's voice he heard. Those were his first steps. Sookie had been there for that, but how?

A flash and then he saw himself on his first bike. He looked like he was six, maybe seven when his dad pushed him off and he wobbled even in his training wheels as he pedaled down the drive. The view point changed and it came closer to him, and there was barking! He saw himself turn, "Stay back, Lily!" he heard his father yell. Lily? That had been his golden retriever's name. She had been his dog until he went to college. Sookie had been Lily? The realization would have knocked him off his bike if he had still actually been six or seven.

Lily had consoled him through his first break up with a girlfriend. She had always been there for him, just always seemed to know when he needed a friend or a game of toss the stick to make him feel better. God, he had loved that dog…that Sookie?

Another flash, and he was looking up at an eighteen year old version of himself far from home and feeling homesick. "Here, kitty," he had called, squatting down to pet the tiny tabby he had found outside his dorm. She had wrapped around his ankles, and purred for him, making him laugh. He had taken her to his room, fed her and kept her that first year. She had been a great cat except she never liked it when he brought a girl to his room. She would hiss and scratch to be let out like her tail was on fire. She had disappeared after he had stopped being so home sick and had adjusted to life away from home. He had named her Lady Mischief, called her Mischief for short. Lady Mischief had been Sookie, still there, still looking after him.

He remembered then that his parents had called and told him that Lily had disappeared from the farm back home. Lady Mischief had helped him through his tears at losing his childhood friend, curling on his chest and making bread with her tiny delicate claws until she curled up and purred for him as he rubbed her and wiped his tears.

Another flash and he was in LA, his first shitty apartment. He looked massive here, like the giant from the beanstalk story. He saw the look on his face, a mischievous grin as he lay out a piece of cheese and stepped back. He felt himself run out on tiny feet and grab the cheese before disappearing under the cabinet. Most people would have bought a mouse trap when they found out they had mice. Eric had just bought more cheese and taken to calling the mouse Mickey. He wasn't supposed to have pets in his apartment, but then wasn't supposed to have mice either, so he figured it all balanced out in the end. Mickey had been Sookie, too.

Another flash, his apartment in Shreveport, the jinxy black cat that showed up on his doorstep early one morning as he was coming home from the station. He had named her Sheba, and always made sure he picked up a can of tuna for her when she stopped by. She came around once or twice a week, wrapping herself around his ankles with such sheer delight he couldn't help but smile. She loved him. Sheba, no Sookie, had loved him. She had been right there his whole life and he never knew.

He turned on his side in the seat of the SUV and let himself travel deeper into the blood dream. He had so many questions. Maybe there were answers here.

Then he was back in his bed, when she brought him after Lorena attacked him. She leaned down to kiss him on the forehead, but he was full of borrowed memories and a lifetime of love now. This moment seemed so much bigger than it had the first time he had seen it from the outside. When she leaned down he caught the back of her head with one large hand and moved her to his lips.

The shock was electric. In a flash he had flipped her over him and rolled to place his body on top of hers. "You should have told me," he said between deep hot kisses.

"I was to watch, never to touch. Never to love. Only to protect," she moaned as she pulled his lips back to hers.

"But you did love me, I feel it," he told her as he moved to kiss her neck.

"No, it is not what I was made for." He pulled back to look in her eyes. So much emotion there he was again reminded of the ocean.

"You're not made of cold, hard stone." He whispered to her. "There is so much love in you, Sookie." She shuddered beneath him, her hands coming up to pull him down to her lips again.

"Only for Eric." She rolled them over then, her body atop his, her legs straddling his body. She pressed herself close to him, pulling back to look in his eyes. "Is this the beginning, finally?" she gasped, panting in her need for him. His answer was a kiss.

32XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX23

"Our boy's dreamin' something good back there," Lafayette said, when he heard Eric's sexy moan in the backseat. I can tell, she thought but said nothing. "Wonder what's on his mind?" The smirk on Lafayette's face told her that he thought he knew the answer. Given the feelings she was getting from him now through their blood tie she suspected he was right.

What woman filled his dreams, she wondered? He had not been involved for anything more than one night since they had moved to Louisiana. Was it the buxom brunette from a few weeks ago? The blond from the month before? Sookie had trained herself over the years not to care, not to feel when Eric had a woman in his life. But these weren't her feelings she was feeling, they were his. She clenched the steering wheel cursing the stupid blood tie they had now.

How the fuck would she ever learn to deal with this bullshit? Lafayette noticed the unhappy expression on her face and her death grip on the wheel. He was good at math and figured he knew what must be bothering her. She wanted Eric to be dreaming of her. Looking at her in the dim light of passing cars he took a few minutes to really look at the woman who had saved him, bled on him and then woke him up to drive him away at high speeds into the night.

So, this is Eric's something that goes bump in the night, he thought to himself. He covered a smile when he thought about how it was very likely he was dreaming about the woman behind the wheel. He had seen how Eric looked at her when she was looking away. His boy was a smitten kitten. Fuck, if he walked on that side of the street he would be, too. She was tough as nails and easy on the eyes, too. She had been something to see in that diner when she swept in and saved him from the Oreo gang. She had been just as matter of fact when she told him at Eric's urging that if he didn't come with them the gunmen would probably find him and succeed in snuffing out his short but beautiful life.

For now he would take his chances with them and look for the right chance to jump ship. He would be more valuable to the Dark Fae King if he traveled with them to their destination.


	5. Hunger

Eric came awake to the slamming of car door. "Sookie?" he called out a little anxiously as he turned to face her. Her inquisitive face peeked around the driver's seat. He let out of sigh of relief to see her there. Lafayette was missing. Raising an eyebrow, she answered before he could ask.

"Bathroom break." He let his head fall back and closed his eyes.

"Sookie, is it true?"

"Yes, Lafayette went to the bathroom," she said seriously.

"No, I mean that you were with me always. That you were there when I was a baby, when I was growing up and even after at school and in LA. You've always been there?" He heard her breath catch and opened his eyes to look at her. She looked like he had punched her in the face. "It is," he said softly, his tone filled with wonder. "Fuck, it is true."

"H-how did you know?" she was frozen. Would he be angry? Did he feel angry? Checking the tie there was no anger, just a waves of…awe.

"I dreamed that you were there." Fucking blood tie. She bit her lip. He turned over in the seat to face her, pulling his knees up so that his feet rested on the back of the seat, the knees of his long legs touching the back of the front passenger seat. His hand came up to her cheek, the look on his face showing that he doubted that she was really there. She didn't pull back this time, something in his eyes, or in the tie still had her frozen. "You were Lily."

"That's what you called me, yes." She unconsciously turned her cheek into his hand, her eyes on his.

"And Lady Mischief?'

"Yes."

"Mickey and Sheba, too."

"I really like cheese and tuna," she said so quietly he could barely hear her. "Sometimes, I have them together." He smiled and ran his thumb over her cheek.

"I've always been really good reading people, but I missed you entirely." She frowned.

"No, you didn't. You saw me and loved me every day."

"Not like you wanted me to love you." She opened her mouth and then slowly shut it again. She was fighting to speak, or maybe to not speak, he couldn't tell. His gaze zeroed in on her lips as her mouth opened and closed and he thought of her scorching kisses in the dream. _Is this the beginning, finally?_ He wanted her to ask that now so he could answer her with a kiss as he did then.

Suddenly, the passenger door opened and Lafayette climbed back in. "You better go, too while we stopped," he said, shattering the moment. She pulled back and turned around in her seat. Eric let his hand drop, disappointment flooding his body. That was almost a moment they had there, damnit! Sighing, he sat his tall body up and slid across the seat to the door. He looked at Sookie and saw her reaching for the door handle as well. When he got out she was at his side looking around the parking lot with keen eyes. When he started to move she moved with him.

She stepped in front of him opening the door of the small gas station first, her eyes still searching for what he presumed were threats of any kind. She led the way to the restrooms and stood outside the door as he went in. He had a feeling that if it wouldn't have drawn unwanted attention she would have gone in with him, but she stopped at the door, only a shout away if he needed her.

 _Guess shape shifting, ninja fighting, teleporting bad ass guardians don't have to pee_ , he thought as he went in. There was no one in there so he finished his business quickly and was ready to rejoin her when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He looked like warmed over shit. Which all things being equal, was about right. He splashed some water on his face and dried off with a paper towel. It didn't really help.

Who _are_ you? He thought to the image in the mirror. No answer there. His fist clench and he wanted to punch his silent image in the face, but he refrained. How could he not have known? Never even suspected? But then why would he? Why would anyone think that the family dog or the adopted pet mouse was actually a beautiful bad ass woman there to protect him from a Dark Fae King? He chuckled at himself and his color started to come back. Thinking that it was possible that the twinkle in his eye might not be madness he turned around, leaving the restroom on a high note.

When he opened the door she was gone. His heart sped up as he stood on tip toe and looked around the small store. He didn't see her. "Sookie?" he called stepping away from the door. He saw her hand pop up an isle over and heard a muffled answer.

"Here." When she stood up she had a pack of Twinkies between her teeth and her hands full of two more. He moved to her and reached up to take the ones out of her mouth looking at her with a smile and an eyebrow up. "What?" she asked. "I really like Twinkies, too."

"I can see that, I just don't understand why." Rather than explain she asked if he wanted anything. Shaking his head he moved to the cooler and got three bottles of water. "You'll need this to keep your kidneys from shutting down," he teased her as they moved to the register. She didn't answer as she paid for the supplies but he saw the smile on her face in the mirror behind the counter as he stood behind her. It made him feel ridiculously happy.

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Lafayette was watching them from the car and he could see that whatever Eric felt for her was definitely returned from the woman he called Sookie. _What kind of fucked up name is Sookie anyway_ , he wondered as he squirmed in his seat. He wasn't happy about what he was doing, but he really had no choice. He needed the money to provide the care his mother needed. Keeping her in a state of the art mental hospital was not fucking cheap.

He had been two shades away from losing the shirt off his back when Warlow had come to him and offered him an incredible amount of money to keep tabs on the new guy. Lafayette had only met Eric once then, it was only later when he got to know him and realized what a genuinely nice guy he was that his conscience started to bother him.

It had eased up when Warlow told him it wasn't really Eric he wanted, it was the woman that he was watching through the window now. He wanted Lafayette to help him lure her out so that Warlow could take her. Lafayette didn't even know her, had never seen her, and didn't believe she even existed before this morning.

Warlow had called before they left the station telling him to take Eric to breakfast. There they would lure out the woman and Warlow would take her. He hadn't believed she was going to show until she did. The men Warlow had sent had pulled her out of hiding just as the King had planned. Evidently, the teleportation was not something he had known about or this morning would have ended very differently.

He ran a hand over his face. She had really believed she was saving him then. She still believed it now. His conscience dug at him again. Maybe she had really saved him, he wasn't dumb, those bullets had been real and they had sprayed them over that diner like a garden hose in summer. They really didn't seem to upset about who they might hit, himself included. He sighed as he watched them coming back to the SUV.

 _Oh, Mama_ , he thought, _you were always more trouble than you were worth._ Sookie and Eric opened their doors and climbed in laughing together. Sookie held out a pack of Twinkies to him. "Bitch is you crazy? That shit will kill you!" She and Eric started laughing again. Eric handed him a bottle of water.

"For your kidneys," Sookie explained, still smiling.

"Riiiight," he said taking the bottle. "Any chance we could get some real food? I could put hurtin' on a burger." Sookie looked at Eric, he shrugged.

"I could eat."

"You could always eat," she said, still smiling. "We'll stop at the first place we see," she assured them turning back to start the car. Lafayette looked back and saw Eric looking at her face in the rearview mirror. A blind man could have read the expression on his face. He was falling for her, and her? Well, she was already gone.

 _Back at the beginning of this I had no idea I was going to be the villain_ , Lafayette thought as she pulled back onto the road. _Stories never end well for the villain._

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A half an hour later on the edge of Knoxville Sookie took an exit and pulled into a place called Sunshine Bar and Grille. KARAOKE TONIGHT! The sign outside exclaimed. BEST BURGER IN TN! It said right below it. When they were seated and had placed their order Lafayette excused himself to wash his hands leaving them at the table.

Eric looked at her, trying to think up something to say. It was hard to make small talk when all the big talk was still unspoken. Sensing his struggle she turned in the booth to look at the person on stage. It was an older man singing a really bad version of Bad Girlfriend. Trying to keep his ears from bleeding Eric leaned across the table and asked her if she wanted to sing. Her cheeks flamed pink. She shook her head.

"Can't all supernaturals sing?" he teased her.

"Not even a little," she assured him going a deeper pink. He smiled at her, an evil glint in his eyes.

"Do you remember that I do like to sing?" She flushed again and he really wanted to kiss her, again.

"I remember," she said flashing back to his singing to her when she was Lily. He had a really nice voice, not star quality but she had always loved when Eric had serenaded her, holding her floppy ears in his large hands as he sang _I'm Just A Teenage Dirtbag_ like he was auditioning. Some nights he had even gotten her up on her hind legs to dance with him. Those awkward circles around his bedroom floor were some of her happiest memories.

Before she realized what he was doing he was out of the booth and headed to the book to find a song. The place was nearly empty, despite having the best burger in Tennessee, so as soon as he found his song he moved to the stage and adjusted the mic for his height.

Her heart was pounding, her skin warm as she watched him. When the music started she didn't recognize the song but as he sang the words she realized that didn't matter because Eric Northman was singing just to her. She was in his room again, she was in some dive in Tennessee eight hundred miles away from his bedroom, she was in Heaven and she was in Hell.

She could feel the emotion rolling off him through the blood tie as he tried so very hard to tell her something that she would not give him a chance to just speak.

 ** _One look and I can't catch my breath  
Two souls into one flesh  
When you're not next to me  
I'm incomplete_**

 ** _Cause I'm on fire like a thousand suns  
I couldn't burn it out  
Even if I wanted to  
These flames, tonight  
Look into my eyes and say you want me to  
Like I want you_**

 ** _Oh love let me see inside your heart  
All the cracks and broken heart  
The shadows in the light  
There's no need to hide_**

 ** _Cause I'm on fire like a thousand suns  
I couldn't burn it out  
Even if I wanted to  
These flames, tonight  
Look into my eyes and say you want me to  
Like I want you_**

 ** _It's like a heartbeat ending  
Yet, it's never ending  
Yet, I'll burn for you (I'll burn for you)_**

 ** _I'm on fire like a thousand suns  
I couldn't burn it out  
Even if I wanted to  
These flames, tonight  
Look into my eyes and say you want me to  
Like I want you_**

 ** _I got a hunger in me  
I got a hunger in me_**

Her eyes were blurry and something was sliding down her face when he finished. She reached up and found her face was wet. She had never cried before, never, not once, but he had reduced her to a blubbering mess with a song, with all the emotion she could feel from him. It was too much.

"Damn, boys got it bad, for you, girl," Lafayette said. She jumped. She didn't even know he had returned to the table. Fuck, some guard she was! Letting herself get swept away in dreams that could never be. The fact that she had lost herself, and failed to remain alert for trouble only underscored her mistake. She moved to the edge of the booth standing to find herself facing a broad chest. A moment later the hands that matched it came up and clasped her upper arms.

"Sookie, what's wrong?" he asked, leaning down to speak in her ear. She could feel the depth of his caring and it jammed her radar again, taking over all her senses, even her sense of self preservation. Refusing to stay, but also refusing to hurt him without some explanation she took a breath and felt fresh tears come down her cheeks.

"I can't…I can't let this happen between us. It's too distracting. You're too distracting. I can't protect you and let all these feelings in." Her tone, filled with such longing and regret, cut into him more than her words. This wasn't going to happen for them. It was all just a dream. Just another part of this mess that had become his life that he didn't understand at all. He was trying to center himself by using this feeling he had for her, and he did feel for her. Something about her called to him. Everything else was shit and chaos but she was solid and real and she was the only thing in his life now that was. He needed her!

"You only think you do, Eric. You don't really love me. I'm just the thing you are holding onto keep from being swept away."

"Don't tell me what I feel for you!" he hissed to her.

"Then hear me when I tell you that I can't keep you safe with stars in my eyes and dreams of something that can never be. This," she gestured back and forth between them, "Can never be, Eric, and no one on this fucking planet is sorrier about that than me." Before he could answer her the waitress came with their order and she slipped away heading for the door to stand guard outside.

Eric stood there, his fists clenching as he breathed in and out slowly, hearing the weight of her words and the pain in the voice that had said them. Lafayette looked at him.

"So, you goin' after her or what?" Eric spun on his heel and took advantage of his long legs reaching the door in a few giant strides. He caught her just outside the door and spun her around to face him.

"No," she managed to get out before his lips crashed into hers. His kiss told her that he didn't care about being saved if he didn't get to have her. She fought him, but only for a moment. It was too hard to deny that she had wanted this to happen for so very long, and too easy to let herself feel him like she had always wanted to.

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 _A/N Special thanks to Ross Copperman for Hunger_


	6. Seven Devils

6\. Seven Devils

His kiss was everything she had ever hoped and somehow more than she had dreamed. All the times she had watched him kiss someone else flared and burned in her mind. They burned inside her, and then they burned up along with whatever little resistance was still in her. He pushed her up against the wall of the Sunshine Bar and Grille and deepened his kiss, determined that when they stopped, _if_ they stopped he would have kissed away all her foolish notions about how they couldn't work.

He knew it was fast, but everything had been fast since she had swept into the diner this morning and saved his life. If it wouldn't slow down then he was damned if he would fall behind. The fact that she had gone to such great lengths to protect him for so long was overwhelming. He was determined to find out whether it was just because he was her job or if there was more to it. From the tears she had on her cheeks there was more. He wanted to know how much more.

Random disjointed thoughts moved through Sookie's mind as he pressed his body to hers. _Protect…keep him safe…oh his tongue…too exposed_. She flipped them around and pressed him against the wall, so that at least his back was shielded from attack and then covered as much of his front with as much of her front as she could. Her hands rose up to tangle through his hair. She took a deep breath through her nose and froze. Pulling back just enough to use her lips for something other than kissing she whispered, "Don't move."

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 _Where the fuck is they?_ Lafayette was watching Sookie and Eric make out against the window feeling guilty as shit about the fact that when he went to wash his hands he had called Warlow and told him where they were. "Stay there. I will send someone to you." He had come back out while Eric was singing to her. She had been so into what he was doing she didn't even notice he had sat back down. He watched her, the tears on her face as the song went on and wondered not for the first time what the fuck he was doing.

He knew, but the reasons seemed small when he realized that the call he had just made was going to bring this budding love story to its knees. Giving Eric a push to go after her was not only about his guilt but also about the fact that they needed to be there when the Dark King arrived.

It was hard to remember a time before he had made himself that monster's bitch. A time when he didn't know that supernaturals existed in this world. At first he had been dismissive, but then the King had given him a demonstration of his power and might. Lafayette shuddered at the memory. Perhaps it had been more than financial need that had driven him to say yes to what Warlow proposed. Perhaps it was a shred of genuine terror that having seen what he was capable of a 'no thanks' would have led to him being the demonstration for whoever Warlow approached next.

 _Could she stop him?_ Lafayette wondered as he watched them kiss, her flipping Eric, who was twice her size against the building and kiss him like she was never gonna kiss him again. He saw her again in the diner and what had been a stray thought became a tiny shining hope. It flared only a moment when he realized again that he had called Warlow and he knew where they were. "Shit!" he exclaimed, rising to go tell them what he had done. He looked away as he rose and when he looked back they were gone. "What the fuck?" he started toward the door and then froze as it opened.

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Sookie had been blasted from her kissing euphoria when she took a breath because she smelled them right behind her. Dark Fae! Immediately she suppressed her scent and then cloaked herself and Eric, telling him as quietly as she could not to move. _Please, Eric,_ she thought, _don't move!_

This was all new to Eric and he was in a kissing haze but he wasn't stupid. He froze when she told him to. From the corner of his eye he saw them, six of them, big like the guys in the diner had been. _Wrong_ like the guys in the diner, too. All dressed in the same long black trench coats that billowed out behind them like the wind responded to their desire, swirling around them to enhance the effect of their arrival into a dark cool nightmare of entrancing evil. _They look like they ride the wind_ , he thought, only to find out later that he was more right than he knew.

They moved right past where Eric and Sookie were cloaked heading for the door. "I smell her," one of them said, licking his lips, appearing to be hungry more than sexually aroused. He felt Sookie shiver but remained still. One by one they went in. When the door closed he whispered, "Lafayette!" She was watching them over his shoulder. Six devils in the Sunshine Bar and Grille, filling it with their broad shoulders and dark auras. Make that seven devils, she thought when she saw them approach Lafayette and start to question him.

He knew them! "FUCK!" she whispered. Then she picked him up and moved faster than she had ever moved before. Eric found himself beside the stolen SUV the keys in his hand. "Listen to me," she told him pulling his face down to hers. "Drive, go home. No one knows where that is but you and me, right? Lafayette doesn't know?"

"No," he confirmed. "But we can't leave him."

"I'll take care of Lafayette but I need you away from here. I need you safe."

"I can't leave you!"

"I will catch up, but if I don't, if I am late, the crystal is in the loft of the barn. Find it! I will find you!"

"Sookie!"

"No, time. Go!"

"But what do I tell them, the owners now? My parents are dead the farm was sold, Sookie!"

"You own it. I bought it for you. You'll be safe there. Go! Wait for me there. The house should still be warded. Get the crystal and get inside!" She was opening the door and shoving him inside as he tried to protest. Things were happening even faster now and he was not sure what to do. "GO!" she said to him, "I will find you, I promise!"

"Sookie-"she slammed the door and turned away striding with purpose toward the bar. He started the car and tried to leave the parking lot in the least attention drawing way possible but he was shaking so hard with fear and adrenaline that the car was jerking as much as he was. He watched her in the rearview mirror for as long he could and made himself drive on into the night fighting with everything he had not to turn back.

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 _Inside,_ she thought. _I want them inside. There are six of them, if they get me in an open area where they can spread out and attack me I won't have a chance. Inside. Stay inside you fuckers._ She put on a burst of speed when she heard the sound of Eric's car grow distant as he escaped. Her focus came to the battle in front of her and for the first time since before she had walked into that diner her life was cold, controlled and made the kind of sense that she had been bred to understand. She could taste the blood in the air that was about to be shed. Her fangs came down and she chuckled at the feel of them, her vampiric nature rising to the surface.

"To me!" she called out, extending her hands up in on the air to catch her magical Fae swords. Vengeance and Death she named them, and she wielded them like they were an extension of her body. She sent her shields out before her causing the doors to explode inward, shards of wood and glass cutting through the bar like lasers. She entered behind them and launched herself at her first opponent.

Dropping down and spinning on her toes she cut his legs off at the knee with Vengeance, rising in a fluid motion as came around again, moving with liquid speed she severed the spine of the next one with Death. She saw that the doors had killed one, glass shards lodged in his face and eyes. That left three and the traitor. She saw Lafayette on the ground bleeding. He was last.

She heard one behind her, the one who had smelled her outside. He had gun his hands with silver and lead bullets. He pulled the trigger at point blank range, she moved as he did going toward him, stepping around his bullet to skewer him on the neck, Vengeance rising through the top of his head like the fin of a shark. Before she could pull it out she felt a sharp slicing pain her side. She let go of Vengeance and faced her opponent with Death at the ready.

"That'll leave a scar," her opponent said in a light manner as he lunged again, his own sword moving faster than a human eye could see. She deflected and noted that her wound was slowing her down. Where was the last one? Knowing that her wound would lead to her losing an all-out sword fight she dropped down and grabbed the gun from the ground firing a round that landed right between her opponent's eyes. As he fell she felt a knife pressed to the side of her throat. Correction, a silver knife from the burns forming on her skin.

"That'll do," he said in her ear, pulling her to her feet, keeping the knife on her jugular. _Not hardly_ , she thought, waiting for her chance. She had learned a long time ago that thinking you had the advantage only made you vulnerable. She pressed herself against the blade, making it cut her so she could turn and bring Death up between his ribs, right into his heart. The knife severed her artery, as he fell to the floor she went down with him her fangs seeking his own arteries to heal her wounds. She tore him open, growling in ecstasy as his blood flooded her mouth, traveling through her to all the places she needed to heal. When she rose, she was covered in his blood, her fangs still down and her eyes a light. She moved toward Lafayette cowering on the floor.

She stood there letting him get a good look at her, letting him feel afraid, letting him know that she planned to do to him what she had done to the others, and that she was going to enjoy it so fucking much more.

"I'm s-s-sorry," he got out, his eyes large with fear. The smell of him turned her stomach. She went into his mind and saw how he had come to this place. His mother, her illness, his financial troubles, his meeting with Warlow. Warlow's desire for her.

This was about her? She dug deeper, looking for some clue why he wanted her but Lafayette did not know. Perhaps it was just to take her out, to leave Eric alone and vulnerable. The question was how did Warlow know about her?

Then in his memories she saw the necklace that Warlow wore. He had a piece of the Tempus Key around his fucking neck! She knew that he might have it, had been told that was how he would know about Eric and why she must protect him. The fact that he also knew about her meant that someone in 2065 had betrayed her. They had told him she was here. Or maybe she had been careless and given herself away as she watched over Eric?

She needed to think. This was not the place for that. She knelt down beside Lafayette, resting Death on its point on the floor beside her. She looked at him long and hard. Eric had cared about this waste of space enough to risk his own life to save him, and the whole time he had been on Warlow's payroll. For Eric, she wouldn't kill him, but it wasn't mercy that stayed her hand.

"What Warlow will do to you for this," she said tilting her head to the wasteland of bodies behind her, "Is far worse than anything I could do." The man shivered and whimpered. "You know I am right. So far all you have seen in sweetness and light, and that includes the demonstration he gave when you agreed to work for him." She chuckled. "I bet you didn't know a human being could be cut into so many pieces before that meeting, did you, Lafayette?" He whimpered again. "You know he plans that for your whole race? To slice his way through each and every one of you like so much wheat to be reaped. He plans to take this world for his own. That's bad. But you wanna know something even worse?" He shook his head, but nothing could have stopped her from telling him the full breadth and width of his mistake, his betrayal. "What's worse is that the only thing that can stop him, the only hope your pitiful little race has at all is the man…you…just…betrayed."

Lafayette let out a keening moan. "You…you will save us? You will, right?" he begged clutching at her. She rose. There had been a handful of people in this place before she had blown the doors and baptized them all in blood. Some were dead, casualties of a war they didn't even know was happening. Some were hiding. She could hear their banging heartbeats. They meant nothing to her, but they mattered to Eric. She looked back down at Lafayette, the expression on her face calm and hauntingly beautiful even with her the gore that covered her skin.

"No, I'll save _him_."


	7. Imagine That!

As soon as Eric was away the urge to go back was nearly overwhelming. Turn around, part of him shouted, only to be overridden by the part that said drive faster! His mind kept showing him the six large opponents that Sookie would have to face to save Lafayette and come back to him. He had no idea if she could do it.

Could she do it?

If he went back what could he do?

His foot was to the floor and when he looked down the speedometer was bouncing on 95. Shocked, he let up and tried to take some deep breaths to calm himself before he lost control and killed himself defeating all of Sookie's work.

 _Home, gotta go home._

The last time he had been home was when he put his parents in the ground ten years ago. They had been killed by drunk driver on their way home from a church benefit. The driver had been killed as well. It had been a senseless waste all the way around and one of the darkest times in his life.

For the first time he had been glad that he lived away, to be there surrounded by their ghosts would have been too much for him to bear. At the same time, he felt he should have been there, that he could have done something to save them if he hadn't been on the other side of the country. It had taken a long time to shake that feeling of guilt for moving so far away and missing out on spending time with them while they had been alive. It was an old wound, one that he didn't pick at.

His breathing under control he started to become aware that he was traveling on a secondary road somewhere in Tennessee. Looking up at the rearview directional he was headed west. He needed to find the interstate and get back on the road to Virginia. There was hardly any traffic but still before he took his focus off the road and onto the GPS he glanced around. When he looked to the left, expecting to see nothing but darkness and trees he felt his mouth come open in shock when he saw a man's face right outside his driver's window flying beside the car. Glancing down he saw that he was now doing 55, looking back at the man, whose dark coat spread out around his body like wings as he kept pace beside the SUV, he remembered his thought outside the Sunshine Bar and Grille.

 _They look like they ride the wind._

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Escatan watched the woman stuff the man twice her size into the SUV and then turn back to the restaurant. He had held back as Warlow had advised to watch from a distance. If she managed to defeat the others he was to follow and then report back where they were headed. Warlow was very interested in where they were running to. Almost as much as he was in capturing the woman. He wanted the man, too. This pathetic human Eric Northman, but he was at the bottom of the list.

Watching Northman pull out of the parking lot, Escatan had taken to the air again, relishing the feeling of the cool air buffering his body. He was Dark Sky Fae and the air answered to his commands. He was taking a chance yes, because Eric was the least important thing to Warlow, but he believed that if the woman succeeded in defeating his brothers then she would come to the man. He was following to hedge their bets.

From above he watched the SUV speed away, swerving like its driver was intoxicated, and then a short time later it slowed to a more reasonable speed and became more confident in its course down the two lane blacktop. Escatan came down closer, so close he was almost resting on top of the car, but not quite. After a few minutes he got bored with the easy catch and decided to have to some fun. He floated down beside the passenger window, staring at the man who was so much fucking trouble. He thought he was going to have to tap on the glass to get his attention but finally Northman looked over, his mouth dropping open as she saw him. Escatan smiled and waved at him.

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As he had at sixteen when he saw the werewolf his foot came off the gas pedal, a reflexive reaction to the abject terror that flooded his system. His muscles felt like limp spaghetti noodles, over cooked and cold abandoned on a counter somewhere. But Eric Northman wasn't sixteen anymore and he wasn't going to go out as a limp spaghetti noodle. Not his style. He closed his mouth and pressed the button to roll the window down. The air flooded into the car, swishing through his hair. He forced a smile on his face and felt his muscles harden again.

"Hey, asshole. Need a lift?" The smile disappeared from the dark man's face like Eric had punched him. That was gratifying and almost worth what happened next. He saw the man wave his arm and felt the car rising up off the road, tilting on its side. The world went upside down and into slow motion. He saw the windshield fill with the green of the bank on the side of the road and then he heard a voice. "You'll be all right." He relaxed completely and surrendered his body to the jerking motions of the tumbling vehicle. It was Sookie who had spoken to him. He had absolute faith in her.

The SUV rolled two and half times, going airborne between rolls. Eric relaxing into it had saved his life, that and his seatbelt which left him hanging suspended in the upside down vehicle. His consciousness faded in and out.

Black.

Shoes coming toward the car.

Black.

The sound of dark evil laughter.

Black.

The sound of high pitched screams.

Black.

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Sookie had left the Sunshine Bar and Grille with one thought on her mind. Eric. She shifted into a peregrine falcon and followed the tug of the blood tie to his side. For the first time ever she was grateful for the tie. Pushing her body to its limits she flew up and fast through the night her sharp eyes found him from high above just as his terror bellowed through her. Going into a dive that reached over 200MPH, she let out a cry, tucking her legs and wings in to increase her speed and gain every edge she could. She had seen the Dark Fae beside the SUV.

When she was almost there she felt something else from Eric, resolution and anger. Sure signs he was about to do something she would be sorry for. She watched the car start to flip over, her precious burden inside it. She screeched her denial into the night again pushing harder to get there faster. No one is sure how fast a peregrine falcon can go, but if they had been timing her that night their gauges would have seen she topped out at near 300MPH at the end of her dive, before she turned and slowed, claws extended.

She caught the Dark Fae as he approached the upturned vehicle taking his eyes in her first pass by. She turned, shifting in midflight back to her normal form, fangs out in her rage. She knew Eric still lived, she could feel him, but she also knew that he was badly hurt. She ripped at the body and tore out the Dark Fae's throat draining him, and letting him fall to the ground as she moved to Eric's side.

She tore the seatbelt loose with her hands, catching him before he fell and pulled him from the car. She took him a safe distance away and then tore her wrist open feeding him her blood. After a few minutes his wounds began to heal and he stirred in her arms.

Eric awoke to find himself pressed against the lovely breasts of a very naked Sookie. She had blood on her face, her fangs were still down, and the look of worry on her face as she stared down at him made his chest clench. "How bad is it?" he asked, not looking at himself, afraid of what he might see.

"It's fine now. You are healing. Your ribs need a few minutes but then you will be good as new."

"How?"

"I gave you my blood."

"Oh." He paused. "Your blood does that…heals people?"

"It can." She was brushing his hair back off his face now, her expression one he couldn't read.

"Where's Lafayette?" he asked rising to look around. He felt her stiffen.

"He didn't make it."

"They killed him? You couldn't save him?" She looked away and didn't answer him. He felt bad for making her think she failed. "I'm sure you did everything you could," he reassured her. She didn't answer. After a moment she stood helping him to his feet. He had a moment of dizziness and then it passed. He looked around and saw the car was totaled and the man who had been flying beside it was in pieces on the ground. He shuddered when he saw the man's arm a foot away from his body. She had done that in her rage. She had literally torn him apart. He looked down at her again.

It came to him then that he barely knew her, let alone what she was capable of. Looking at what she had done here he took a breath and asked her, "What happened at the bar?"

"What had to happen. They are dead. I am not."

"And it's just that simple?"

"To me it is." He ran a hand through his hair. It was beyond too much. This morning over breakfast with his friend who hadn't made it to see the end of that same night he had thought he might be going crazy. Now after the shootout, the blood drinking, the dreams, the kisses, the accident and more blood drinking he was left sure that being crazy would have been preferable.

Sensing his overload Sookie looked at him, not without concern on her face. "Are you ok?" she asked him taking a step toward him.

"Fine," he said shortly raising a hand to her and taking a step back.

"I need you to keep it together for a little while longer, Eric." Her tone was cold and detached. How could she be so fucking detached when she had just killed seven men that he knew of. Did nothing phase her? He felt his stomach roll over and he heaved. He turned away and bent over, retching.

"Is this my life now?" he managed to get out between heaves. She didn't answer him. After he stopped and wiped his mouth she stood back.

"We have to move. We need to find a new car. Come, I will carry you."

"I can walk."

"I know that. Come, I will carry you." She shifted then into a beautiful chestnut mare. Nickering softly she stepped toward him and stuck her velvety nose into his hand. He didn't smile but he didn't pull away either. A moment later he moved to swing up gracefully onto her back, wrapping his fingers tightly in her mane. Together they galloped away into the night.

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 ** _Back at the Sunshine Bar and Grille_**

Warlow knelt down beside the trembling Lafayette. _I wonder why she left him alive, h_ e thought as he looked around. Lafayette watched as several Warlow's men waved their hands repairing the door and making bodies disappear. Within moments it was as though nothing had happened here at all. One of his men brought a silver knife to Warlow that was covered in blood.

"Is it hers?" he asked, looking at the knife with interest.

"We believe so. It smells like her. It might not be contaminated."

"Wrap it up," Warlow said and then turned back to Lafayette. "Wrap him up, too. If it turns out to be hers we'll need a lab rat to play with." The Dark Fae solider nodded and turned away to secure the knife. Warlow looked down at Lafayette a smile on his face.

"You've seen what she is capable of, haven't you?" he asked the trembling man on the floor.

"Yes," Lafayette whispered, afraid not to answer.

"Imagine," Warlow said, looking off into the distance at something only he could see, "An army of them, just like her! All her power! All her abilities! All at my disposal! Imagine that!"

Understanding at last why Warlow wanted the woman that Eric called Sookie he wished again that she had killed him.


	8. Blades of Grass

Eric's head was pressed against the glass of the passenger door as he watched the miles tick by. He had not spoken since they had left the accident sight in Tennessee hours before. When Sookie had stopped for gas he had remained in the car. They were nearly home now. Home, the word didn't belong here in the small town of Glasgow, Virginia. Home was in Shreveport. It had been anyway, but that was over now.

Sookie saw his hand clench in his leg and felt the anger and confusion moving through him like a tidal wave. She had not looked into his mind, there had been no need. She clenched the wheel and tried to believe that the shift in his focus from her and a future for them to facing his new reality was for the best, but she couldn't stop thinking of that kiss outside the Sunshine Bar and Grille.

She should not be thinking of that, she had told him that she couldn't let that happen, and then she had let it happen anyway. She had told him that he was just holding on to her because there was nothing else for him to hold onto, and it seemed she had been right. His reaction to her execution of the Dark Fae that had tried to take his life was…predictably human. Her lip curled in contempt and then she stopped.

He was human.

She had never felt contempt about that before. Why did she now? Was it because all his words of desire, his feelings that matched those words had changed her expectations of him? Did she expect him to mean what he said and did? Yes, she concluded. She did expect him to mean his words to her, and his detachment and distance left her angry and confused. Why had she rearranged her mind, and considered opening her heart of he was fickle in his words and affections?

How could she expect him to know what he wanted when his world was completely upside down? This was her world they were in now, the curtain back and the man clearly before them. She had always known but he had not. This was her fault, not his.

Perhaps it was herself she felt contempt for and he was the only person around to aim it at. She took a deep breath and tried to focus on the fact that they were nearly at the Northman farm. Coming off the interstate she merged the car fluidly into the traffic. She stuffed all her emotion back down deep inside her. It's for the best, she thought for the hundredth time. It's for the best. Maybe if she told herself enough times she would actually start to believe it. She took a left off the main road and onto a secondary road that did not even have two lanes marked off. When they topped the hill that looked down into the sixteen acres of Northman property she felt sadness roll through the tie. Eric was not happy about coming home.

The large white farm house sat atop a hill that offered a vantage point to all sides. It was surrounded by flat grassland that when Eric was a boy had been filled with cattle. The Northman's didn't raise them, but rather rented the space out for profit to local cattle men. Now the fields were overgrown with grass right up to the fence. She had arranged for someone to maintain the property and was pleased to see they had the yard looking exactly as it had when she and Eric had lived here long ago.

When they exited the car, Sookie immediately checked the wards, they were intact telling her that no one had been in the house. She turned to see Eric headed for the old barn situated about a hundred yards from the main house. There were several buildings on the property but it was hard to miss the barn, it was the largest of the out buildings. She moved to follow him.

He was already in the loft when she came in the door. "Where?" he called down.

"Over in the left corner, there is a loose board." She listened to his footsteps and watched the dust falling as he moved over her head. A moment later she heard the board pulled back, old nails screeching as they moved. Then his footsteps came back toward the ladder. He walked toward her a small leather case in his hand.

"This it?" She nodded, he stepped around her and headed back to the house. She followed, the feeling of dread growing in her no matter how many times she told herself this was for the best. When he got to the backdoor, he moved the large flower pot and picked up the key that was there. His mother had always kept it there in case he lost his when he was at school. Another stab of pain hit him and then her.

He opened the door and moved inside. She followed slowly. He was standing in the kitchen, his head turning as he absorbed that nothing, nothing had been changed. His pain amplified. She moved closer to him and then stopped. She couldn't help what he was feeling, and she couldn't stop what had to happen next.

There was a small table in the kitchen, he pulled out a chair, the one he had used when he lived here before and sat down, placing the small leather case on the table. Taking a deep breath, he looked at her for the first time in hours. "What now?"

"Open the case and get your answers." He raised a brow at her.

"Whatever is in here can tell me why my life has gone to shit in the last twenty-four hours? Why my friend is dead? Why you have been lurking in the shadows of my entire life watching my every move? Can it do that, 500K13? Can whatever is in there tell me all that?"

His returning to her designation rather than using the name he had given her sent a wave of pain through her. She blinked, but that as all she showed him for impact from his harsh words. She stood there, her face stoic, prepared to take his anger and his rage if need be. All of those things had to get out of the way to make room for the truth.

"What are you, anyway?" he asked her, his lip curling with the same contempt she had felt as they approached this place. "What are you that you can do all these things that I have seen you do?" His tone clearly said that he found her less than satisfactory in some way. She kept her face blank and hoped it would be over soon. To say anything before he knew what was on the crystal was to say too much. They could talk once he knew enough to know what he was talking about. Until then he was a child swatting out in petulant anger.

Enraged that she was unresponsive to him, completely unmoved by the fact that he was coming apart made him rise to his feet and tower over her. She looked at his chest refusing him the courtesy of looking into his eyes. "Look at me!" he said as he viciously jerked her head up to him. She kept her expression blank. It was killing her to see him like this.

"WHAT ARE YOU?" he roared into her face. She blinked.

"Whatever you need me to be." He jerked his hand away and stepped back, his face a mask of rage and fear. She might as well have punched him.

"So, this is my fault? All these people are dead because of me?" Or because of me, she thought, but this was not the time to share that information. Nor could she tell him of the millions he could still save. She couldn't tell him that, but if she could get him out of this spinning rut and onto the crystal he might find some answers there in a way that would leave them something to talk about.

"You must open the case and touch the crystal. Then you will have your answers."

"Fine!" he said through gritted teeth, jerking the case up and open. A square blue crystal rested inside. He picked it up and looked at it intently. He looked back to her, his face still masked in anger. "A rock? What the fuck is a rock supposed-"he stopped, his eyes rolling back into his head.

She caught him as he fell, protecting him from hitting his head on the table. The crystal was gripped in his hand. It has begun, she thought as she gently placed him on the floor and waited for him to awaken.

32XXXXXXXXXXX23

"Time splinters. A lot of people don't know that." That voice, Eric thought. I know that voice. "It happens in moments of choice, of cataclysmic events, of a single blade of grass mowed down before its time. Something else they don't know? We're all blades of grass."

The dark around Eric lit up and found himself standing before and older version of himself. He remembered seeing that face in Sookie's mind on a monitor in her lab. This was his future self, right down to the scar on his face. He looked into the older Eric's eyes and again felt that he would not want to see the things those eyes had seen.

"If she has given you the crystal then she has been forced to step from the shadows and intervene in the open to save your life. I would be pissed off if I were you."

"You don't know the half of it," Eric answered himself.

"See, that's where you're wrong," older Eric smirked at him.

"You can hear me?" Older Eric smiled and nodded. "Let me guess, we don't have much time and you have a lot to tell me?" Older Eric chuckled.

"Yes, so shut up smart ass. You can be angry later." Eric was expecting him to speak then but instead he felt his head crack open as information was shoved in at in incredible rate. He screamed inside and outside. Sookie flinched at the sounds he made but made herself stay still. She didn't know what was supposed to happen exactly but she had to trust that whatever was going on was what was supposed be happening.

In seconds Eric saw it all. In 1947 in Roswell, NM the reports of a UFO being shot down that were then purported to be a weather balloon by the US government had been the discovery of what he now knew to be Dark Fae. They were "aliens" to this world, not in the grey skinned large black eyed variety. They were more the tall, big Dark variety that had tried to kill him three times now. The encounter had been a reconnaissance scout for Warlow, the Dark Fae King. Their dimension had become unlivable due to wars and they were looking for a suitable place to migrate.

The US government in its wisdom had experimented on the emissary, horrible inhuman experiments that made Eric shudder. Then they had let him escape. When he returned to his dimension Warlow had been enraged and immediately gathered his large army to invade and conquer. Once he was here, he found that while his magic did work, it was weak compared to how it had functioned in his home realm. His plans to enslave the human race quickly fell to ashes at this feet. He adjusted those plans for immediate decimation and moved into a long game.

He and his army infiltrated the governments of the world, and slowly set about creating chaos and destruction. If he couldn't destroy the human race he would trick them into destroying themselves. Every major political upheaval and war of the past century had been at his behest. All the while he remained in the shadows and let his magic grow, working hard to restore his power to levels he had enjoyed in Fae.

His main opposition had been one human man, well mostly human. Eric Northman, former radio personality who used his latent empathic abilities to pull together the humans and the supernaturals that he had found to already be sharing this world in a last stand against the Dark King. It had been a close battle but in the end they had put Warlow and his armies down. Millions had died, but billions had been saved. Warlow had escaped in the end, his whereabouts unknown.

Rumors reached the older Eric that Warlow had found a piece of the Tempus Key. It had been a legend, something thought to be myth only and at first they had ignored the rumors, but before long they received confirmation that not only did Warlow have a part of the Key he had started using it to reach out to himself in the past, seeking to change the future by killing Eric Northman before he could lead the humans and supernaturals in the final tide turning battle.

Images of the key spun out in Eric's mind. A triangle, a circle, and a square. They were separate pieces each representing an aspect of time. Myth said it was as old as time itself and whoever possessed the entire Key could travel to any place and anytime immune to paradox. It was the weapon of a god, maybe The God.

The triangle represented the future, the circle the present, the square the past. When placed together in variations they opened doors to any place and any time. According to the myth it had been separated by the gods of old and flung out into the whole of space and time never to be rejoined. Warlow found the square in the future, the Key to the past and communicated with himself to find the triangle representing the future and in this way they can exchange information.

Older Eric, to protect Eric in the past, he had worked with a team of the strongest supernaturals and the greatest scientists to create 500K13. They sent her back to guard him so that he could do what he was destined to do.

His mind still processing the information he was receiving but he still felt the pain around the creation of 500K13. Understanding better than he ever had before why he felt what words needed to be said and how he knew on some molecular level what was Wrong and what was Right, for the first time he consciously dug into the older Eric's pain needing to see more.

The older Eric had met the Light Sky Fae Princess Sookie at the peak of the war with Warlow. She and her people had fled here centuries before to escape his cruel oppression and destructive ways. Sookie had been older Eric's greatest ally in the effort to join forces with the shifters, vampires and were folk that also lived here beneath the radar. Sookie had convinced them that the human race was but the first to fall. She had seen Warlow's darkness first hand and knew what would happen to the other races once Warlow wiped out the humans.

But there was something else. Eric dug deeper, but older Eric spoke now. "She taught me that not being human was not a bad thing. She opened me up to see that there is more to the world than what I had known with my humanity and my faith in them. I rallied them together with my empathy and my words. With her by my side I opened their minds to the possibility that different is not bad and that the only way we could win was together. She was my whole world." Turning back to older Eric he looked at him.

"Was?"

"She was killed in the final battle. She…sacrificed herself to save me from Warlow's killing blow on the battlefield."

"But she is here now?"

"Yes, and no. To make 500K13 we used science and magic to combine human and supernatural DNA into the woman you see before you. She looks like my Sookie, and from what I have seen of her in training she fights like my Sookie, but…she is not my Sookie."

"You named her 500K13 because of the letter word code. You knew I would figure it out!"

"Yes. She is not _my_ Sookie, she is _yours_."

"Mine?"

"Yes, and if you can find it in yourself to bury your natural prejudices, your fear and your anger you will see the woman at your side will make differences in your life that you never dreamed possible." Eric frowned, older Eric continued. "Warlow seeks to undo the past, and to win in this time by taking you out before you can become me. As long as he has a part of the Tempus Key he can do this and be immune to paradox. You must get that away from him and stop him from changing the past where he was defeated by severing the link. Kill him if you have to."

"But that will change your time as well."

"Yes, it will."

"I don't know what that means," Eric said, trying hard to process it out, but there wasn't time. The download was nearly finished and he could still hear himself screaming distantly.

"It means that time splinters. It means that we are all but blades of grass." Older Eric faded as the download completed. In the real world Eric sat up his scream cutting off abruptly. Sookie moved to him immediately, frightened to see blood coming from his nose. He looked at her, seeing her, but seeing everything he now knew about her, about them, and about what they were facing over her image.

He looked down at the hand that had been holding the blue crystal and made it open. In the middle of his palm lay a round circle. The third part of the Tempus Key, the Key to the present, sat his hand shining like a beacon.


	9. Do What You Do

**_Three Weeks Later_**

Sookie found Eric sitting by the small stream that cut through his parent's farm. He had his knees pulled up, his arms around them trying to be as small as he could be. It was a good indication where his thoughts were.

He had slept for three days and nights after touching the crystal and had said very little to her since he had awakened. She tried not to feel hurt, shoving it down and focusing on the wards and their surroundings looking for signs they had been discovered. At night when he rested safe inside the house and the wards she changed into a bird and circled high and far above the property on alert. If anyone had asked her where she wanted to be she would have said that it was exactly where she was, on guard and ready for whatever might come next.

She would have been lying.

She wanted to be closer to him. For all the years that she had spent at a distance or in some other form that was near him, but not with him, she had in that single day become addicted to being with him, around him. She wanted to talk about the song and the kiss and the good things that had transpired before the accident that had somehow put a wedge between them.

She also wanted to talk about what Eric had seen when he touched the crystal but she did not pressure him on any of those topics. To pressure him might make him try to send her away. If he did that she would have to obey him. Did he know that now? Did he find out that she was bound to follow his every command as law or was that secret still hers?

For Eric, while he slept he had continued to process the massive upload of information that he had received from the future. Some of it was about him, most of it was about the war, but some of it too was about 500K13. How she was made, what she could do. This information was mingled with what had gleaned from taking her blood.

It was all too much.

A short time ago he had been a carefree guy with a job he loved saying whatever came to his mind and talking about things that interested him. Now he was an Empath with a genetically engineered protector that could do things he couldn't even wrap his head around. Now his life was in danger from a Dark Fae King that he had never seen and didn't know. Now the world hung on his shoulders.

"Telling you this changes everything, and nothing," older Eric had told him in his dreams after he touched the crystal. "Knowing the future will paralyze you in some ways but you have to fight past that. You have to remember that to get there you just have to do what you do."

"What do I do?" he had asked his older self, but no answer had been forthcoming. It was now the question that haunted his every waking and sleeping moment. It was so heavy it made it hard to breathe and nearly impossible to rest. It echoed through his dreams chasing him through long dark corridors with heavy footsteps. Every night for the last three weeks he awakened several times covered in cold sweat, his heart racing.

What do I do?

Having seen the devastation that Warlow would bring in his rise to power he also felt terrible guilt about how he had treated Sookie after the accident. She was doing what she was made to do with a level of skill and perfection that humbled and traumatized him. She walked the path before her knowing the future as well as he did, maybe better since she had lived there, but she did not hesitate to do what she was called to do. She made it look easy. That made him feel even more inadequate to the task.

"You've always been empathic," older Eric had told him. "You have always been able to sense the needs of others and you have used that gift to speak to the masses, to calm or incite them with your words alone. This is not new, this is what you are. Now you understand it, but labeling it doesn't change what you are or what you can do."

Except that it did. Now that he knew he was supposed to be talking to people, that he was supposed to be using his gift to speak and prepare them for what was to come he found himself almost incapable of speaking at all. The weight of every word not spoken pulled at him like the size of the task in front of him.

He was supposed to save the world and he couldn't think of what to say that would make that happen. He looked deep inside himself to find the words that would do that but they were not there. How do you find the words to make the world roll backwards and change the fate of millions? Obviously, he could, he had done it before, but he had no idea how to do it now.

What do I do?

Sookie sat down beside him in the warm sun, careful not to touch him. He waited for her to speak, but if he had been at a loss for words these past weeks she was a veritable statue. He knew she was doing what she was made to do, without question and without fail. Sometimes when she was close though he could feel her swirling emotions. Anger, pain, uncertainty but most of that seemed to center around him.

He could empathize, he thought sarcastically.

He had been so certain of her, of wanting her outside the Sunshine Bar and Grille before the Dark Fae had come and shattered his certainty. Before Lafayette had died just because he was friends with Eric and had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The sting of that, the guilt cut at him. Had he been so wrong to trust her? Had it been some magic that made her so irresistible to him? He had taken her blood by accident when he took he bullets, did that affect him in some unknown way? Who was he kidding? If it did affect him, it was still affecting him. It was only his fear of everything that kept him from apologizing and reaching out for her again.

It was only having her remain close to him that kept him from flying off the ground in a flurry of crazy.

He needed her. Too much.

She was here because she was supposed to be. That didn't mean she wanted to be. To press on her for more would be unfair. His needs were her needs. She would not deny him, but to take advantage of that would be wrong. Now that he understood, now that he had seen some of it for himself, he heard her words about how she needed to be focused to protect him and they carried so much more impact than they had when he chased her through the door of that little restaurant determined to show her that she was wrong, that it didn't matter if he couldn't have her.

Had she been right?

These were the mind traps that haunted him. Repeating loops of fear, powerlessness and uncertainty. He could not find his way through them. The sense of time passing, slipping away only added to his tailspin. He needed to be doing something other than sitting on this little farm in the middle of nowhere.

What do I do?

"I envy you," he said to her, breaking the silence of a week. She chuckled.

"This I gotta hear," she said, turning toward him and crossing her legs as she picked at the grass around her.

"No, I mean it. You know exactly what you are supposed to do and you do it. You don't hesitate. You don't waver. You don't doubt. You make it look easy." He turned to look at her then.

"I don't think about it really."

"Exactly. It's all so clear to you." She chuckled again.

"It used to be." His eyebrow went up.

"What do you mean?" She bit her lip and leaned forward her head down.

"It's not as simple now as it was before."

"Before what?"

"Before I revealed myself to you."

"How did that change things?" She looked at him like he was crazy. In that moment he realized how important her opinion was to him. He saw that was why he had not shared his spinning uncertain thoughts with her.

"It is harder now."

"In what way?"

"In every damned way," she snapped at him. "I knew my place before."

"And you don't anymore?"

"No!" she snapped again. He felt his own anger and frustration boil up. Before he said something he was sorry for he saw older Eric again in his mind. She was my whole world, he had said about his Sookie. The pain in his eyes still made Eric shiver. Was part of his problem that he was afraid this Sookie would become his whole world only to lose her in the end as the older Eric had? Did he fear that so much that he was letting that paralyze him, too? He let out a long breath.

"Tell me what you want, Sookie." She looked up sharply, knowing that she had to respond to that command. He saw the hesitancy in her eyes and added. "Truth, Sookie. Tell me the truth of what you want."

"I want to explore what you offered me in the kiss we shared." His heart sped up. The loud sound of his blood pounding in his ears did not mask the unspoken but.

"But…" he said pushing her on to finish.

"But, your reaction to my actions and the truth that I can't let myself be blinded to the danger by my feelings make me unsure of the right path to take. It used to be easier."

"Why?" he pressed her, maybe because he wanted someone else in the hot seat with him, maybe because he felt like he was on the edge of something at long last.

"Before you just did what you do." There it was again.

"What do I do?" She looked at him raising a brow in confusion.

"You lived your life. You did your broadcasts and talked to people. You went home, you went out, you met…women. Sometimes you took them home with you, sometimes you didn't. You just did what you do." He felt her pain when she said women and he was certain then that she had indeed had feelings for him for some time. He winced as he thought of all she had seen in her time in the shadows carrying that unrequited desire for him.

"And now?"

"Now, you don't do those things. Now, for a moment at least I was that woman who thought she was going home with you. Nothing is simple anymore."

"For a moment?"

"Things changed when you saw what I really am."

"Not really." She looked at him, not sure of his meaning. "I mean, I handled it badly that night, I was in shock from the accident and everything and I said…some stupid things. I didn't understand then."

"It doesn't matter now." She stood up to leave but he grabbed her hand holding her in place.

"Maybe it matters now more than ever." He pulled her back down, his other hand coming up to guide her into his lap. She let him, even knowing she had had better ideas she still let him. Having given in she snuggled into his chest and let out a long sigh of pleasure when his arms came around her and she felt his chin on the top of her head.

Nothing should feel this good.

Any thoughts of ever leaving his embrace melted away. She could keep him safe from right here so much better than she could from even a foot away.

"Is it just me or does it feel like you belong right here in my arms?"

"It's not just you. It is why you shouldn't envy me." He held her then, and for the first time since the road side he felt the tension inside him lessen enough to let him take a real breath.

"I've been trying to figure out what I am supposed to do next," he confessed to the top of her head.

"That's easy," she told him, turning her head and leaning up to place a soft kiss on his stubbly cheek. "You just do what you do."

32XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX23

That night, sitting in front of his new laptop, microphone and podcast account Eric "The Northman" returned to the airwaves. His first podcast was about following your dreams and doing what you felt like you were meant to do with your life and how scary that could be.

"People are going to see you chasing or holding your shiny special dream to your chest and most of them are going to immediately set about planning ways to take it away, throw it on the ground and stomp every last bit of joy out of it. They will tell you that you are a fool, that you dream is stupid or that you will never make any money doing it and a million other things whose sole purpose is to make you let it go, walk away and never look back.

"You know what you tell those people?" He smiled at the microphone and reached for his coffee, feeling that old ghost of a need for a smoke rise up assuring him that he was indeed himself again. "You tell them fuck off, and to make it really hurt, you smile when you do it. Then, you go out and do what you do.

"This is The Northman, coming to you from somewhere out here in the dark. Got a story you want to share about your dream? Email me at the address I will give you at the end and I will share your story in my next podcast, because this is me, Eric Northman, still out here, still doing what I do."


	10. Father, Brother, Son

Finding his way back into broadcasting, even in podcasts leveled Eric off in his head. They fell into a comfortable rhythm with each other that they both enjoyed but didn't question and discuss out loud, perhaps fearing that to acknowledge it would shatter its delicate nature.

When Eric woke up every morning Sookie had breakfast ready. They would eat slowly, making comfortable small talk about the weather and the farm and his podcast from the night before. It was in those early morning conversations that Sookie revealed that she always been a fan of his show. He had felt his cheeks turn pink at her admission. The sense of pleasure made him curl his toes inside his shoes as he thought of her listening to his voice carry over the airwaves through the night.

After breakfast they would take a slow walk around the farm, through the field, over the stream and all the way to the fence that cordoned off the Northman property. It was on one of these walks she explained how she had made a fortune on stock with knowledge from the future. That money was how she had bought the farm. That money was now what they used to live on since it was crucial they remain below the radar.

It was hard for him to be here, there were ghosts just like he had feared when he found out this was where they were headed, but they weren't scary ghosts, just fond memories of a happy time in his life, laced with melancholy for the loss of his family. As they walked he felt himself smile as the memories played through his mind of times long past and this too helped to heal the trauma that had left him paralyzed and unsure of what to do.

After their walk they would return to the old farm house and he would make lunch. The first time he had made tuna sandwiches with cheese for her, smiling like an idiot when he set the plate down for her. Her look of amusement followed by her sounds of pleasure as she devoured the food pleased him in some primal way he had not expected. He was in awe of how much she could eat.

"It's my supernatural metabolism," she said around a mouthful of pickle while she reached for another sandwich. "It takes a lot to keep this body running at peak form." He had taken the chance then to peruse her form and found himself thinking of the many meanings of 'peak form. He had been sitting there for a long while lost in his thoughts of her form when she realized he had stopped eating. The look on his face made her tingle. She could have looked into his thoughts to see what exactly was on his mind, but it wasn't necessary and felt like a violation of their delicate truce. Swallowing, she asked him if something was wrong jarring him back to the kitchen with her.

"No," he said blushing again. "I was just thinking." When he didn't offer to explain further she let it go but she really wanted to ask.

After lunch Eric would retire to the sofa to read. Newspapers, novels, magazines, anything he could get his hands on. She wanted to get him a tablet but he had said he preferred the old school versions. Moved by some unexpected impulse she had sat down beside him one day and asked him to read to her.

He had been knee deep in a novel by Delia Hunter, All Alone it was called, and the faces he was making as he turned the pages had drawn her to him, curiosity burning. "What?" he had said, laying the open book down on his chest. He had been stretched out on the old sofa, shoes and socks off. Only his face had shown any movement in over an hour.

"I like the sound of your voice. Read to me?" she asked again. He looked at her for a long moment and then turned on his side, and pulled her down next to him, spooning her from behind, his long arms reaching around her to hold the book out. She had closed her eyes and let his voice take her into the story. His voice was low and gravely, right in her ear, his breath brushing the side of her face. It didn't matter what he was saying, his tone, the feel of him behind her, around her relaxed her completely. She fell asleep there, not needing to rest, in fact she rarely slept at all, but there with him such a feeling of peace came over her that it just happened.

He read until he felt her completely relax, then he stopped, placed the book behind him and snuggled her closer to him following her down into slumber. He never dreamed or worried when they slept like that, and that reading siesta soon became a part of their routine that he looked forward to more than anything else.

When they woke up in the late afternoon Sookie would go out to check the farm and the wards and then come in to start dinner. Eric would record his podcast for the night, adding music now thanks to the nifty licensing that she had purchased for him. He enjoyed the growing email responses he was getting to his broadcasts and would spend a good amount of time going through them and preparing his responses.

After the podcast was uploaded they would eat dinner together, talking again, but evening conversations were always different, more intense somehow than the ones they had during the day. "Tell me about your life in the future, before me," had asked her one night after a second glass of wine. She had just finished and picked up her own glass as she studied him the dim candle light that she had added to the table tonight.

"There was no 'before you' for me. You were the first thing I ever knew." He leaned in closer, captured as much by her face in the candle light as he was by her words.

"What do you mean?"

"You know how I was made?" she asked him, waiting to see if that caused him to flinch and pull back. When he only nodded she let out a breath she had been holding. "I was born in a lab. There were care givers but they were distant and didn't interact with me as I grew. I had an accelerated childhood, and grew to maturity in months rather than years. I was curious about what was outside the door where the care givers came and went, so, when I was the equivalent of about eight human years old, I broke out to see the world beyond the door." She took another sip of wine and he saw her eyes become distant as she went back to the future.

"I made it all the way outside before you caught me."

"I caught you? Oh, you mean older Eric?"

"Older Eric?" she turned her head to the side, her long blonde hair falling down to frame her face in the shadows.

"Yeah, that is how I think of me from then."

"Oh," she said, putting her glass down on the table. "The facility where they made me was an old military base in Nevada. There was a sign that had '51' on it. They had been teaching me to read, that was how I knew. Later, after I was here, I found out about Area 51 and what the humans think is happening there." She laughed then, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "They really aren't that far off, you know? They just think the aliens come from outer space in ships. It never occurred to most of them that the invaders would be from another dimension parallel to their own. That they would pass through some invisible doorway and stake their claim here."

He wanted to hear about that, needed to hear about that, but not tonight. Tonight he wanted to hear about her. He was about to redirect her when she did it herself. "You were the first person to ever touch me. The care givers were afraid of me because they knew I could read their minds." His eyes grew wide.

"You can, um, read my mind?"

"I can. But I don't, unless you are in danger. To do so just because I can doesn't seem fair, but I suppose you can feel me, with your empathic talents, so is there a difference?" She paused. "Can you feel me, Eric?"

"Yes," he said softly, he had been feeling her since they started this conversation, but hadn't realized it until she asked him. He had always just done it. Now that he knew what he was doing, it was something he tried to be more conscious of. "I'm working on shutting it off, but it's harder sometimes than I expected it to be. Especially when I want…When I want to know." She nodded her understanding, not angry that he was being less careful with her than she was with him. She knew it took time to master your gifts and make them work for you, rather than forcing you to work for them.

"It's ok, Eric. I get it." He smiled at her and waited for her to go on.

"When I got outside it was all dust and darkness. The sky was a mass of rolling black clouds and flashes of lightening. Drastic environmental changes had been part of Warlow's plan to claim this world. Most of world looked like what I saw and the magic that still traveled the atmosphere pulled at me. Even then, years after the final battle it was so strong it felt like it was pulling me apart. I covered my ears and crouched down unable to move. It was so overwhelming I was just frozen there, unable to go back or to go forward. It was then that you came.

"You swept me up in your arms, covering my head with one of your large hands, holding me tight to you, you ran back inside and slammed the heavy metal door blocking out the rogue magic and the sound that had crippled me. Your face…" her voice trailed off as she looked at the past future again made him ache in his chest. He could see himself holding the small blonde girl almost as if he was there already.

"Your face was so sad when you looked at me. I wanted to make the sadness go away. I knew even then that I couldn't do that, but I never knew why." He never told her about his Sookie, Eric thought. Why? And then he knew.

She had no need to know. To tell her about the Princess would do to her what the revelations on the crystal had done to him and for no good reason. She was 500K13, not his Sookie, as the older version of himself had said in the download. He had tried to protect her from knowing that she wore the face of his lost love.

She had stopped speaking while Eric was lost in his own revelations. "That was the first time I had seen you, but I saw you often after that. In my life you have been my father, my brother, my son, Eric Northman. There was no before, there has just always been…you."

"So, I made you, and then you made me?" She smiled faintly.

"More the first than the second. I didn't raise you, I only protected you."

"And did you have to protect me often?" She shrugged.

"As often as I needed to." He accepted that, feeling that there were things it would do him no good to know just as there were for her. Her words had left him reeling and he needed time to process them before they went further down this road together. Putting it down for now he stood and loaded their dishes into the dishwasher before taking her hand to lead her to the sofa for the next part of their ritual.

"What shall we watch tonight?" he asked, moving to the stack of DVD's that grew every time they went out for supplies.

"Something bigger than a babies arm," she said giggling behind him. He loved it when she giggled. She was doing that more as the days passed.

"Really?" he raised an eyebrow and turned to her. "Pump Up The Volume, again?"

"It's my favorite!" she said bouncing up and down a huge grin on her face.

"It's a Twinkie of a movie," he said teasing her.

"Oh! Do we have some Twinkies left? That would be great right now!" A few minutes later they were on the sofa, Sookie eating Twinkies watching as Christian Slater faked masturbation his basement while he broadcast his pirate radio show. "He reminds me of you," she said leaning closer, continuing to devour her snack cake.

"I have never played Ice-T and talked about my dick!" he said feigning insult.

"But wouldn't it be cool if you did?" she teased him back. He smiled and raised his arm so she could lean against him.

"No. He really reminds you of me?" She nodded, her head bobbing against his shoulder as she watched.

"Yes, he saw something wrong and used the power of his voice to try and change it." He thought about that a moment and decided he liked the comparison after all. Caught in the high of her appreciation of him his mouth got in front of his brain.

"Well, if I take my shirt off, will you take your top off to be like me?" he asked referencing the scene where the shy radio pirate meets his lady love for the first time. He figured she would laugh and eat another Twinkie.

"Maybe," she said in a quiet serious tone as she stared the screen. "Try it sometime and see." He opened his mouth and then shut it again, looking at screen, too.

"OK," he finally said and felt her relax against him again. "I will." She slipped her hand into his, slowly threading her fingers through his. Nothing else needed to be said right then, it was a perfect moment all in itself.

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 _A/N- So, I do like PUTV, and Christian Slater's character in that movie is part of the inspiration for Eric's character in this story. It's not IMDB top 100, but it's worth checking out if you ever get the chance, and of course the soundtrack is awesome, too._


	11. Paradox

Sookie was climbing a mountain so tall she couldn't see the top, she only knew she had to get there. It was a warm mountain, the ground at once both soft and hard beneath her feet. The incline so steep she was almost laying down to climb it, using her hands and her legs to move her body along.

She was hungry, the heartbeat of the mountain made her fangs descend. She wanted blood. There would be some, she just knew, at the top of the mountain. She had to get there! She felt the mountain shift beneath her, rumbling as it moved, deep in the heart of it. The sound it made caused her fangs to itch and her body to tingle.

She took a deep breath as she fought for another hold to pull herself another step closer to the top and found herself surrounded by a wonderful, comfortable, and familiar smell. It relaxed her, and also spurred her on, driving her focus into a tighter singular point. The mountain rumbled again, deeper this time than before, the vibrations starting a fire inside her that quickly moved between her legs. Her need to get the top increased almost to the point of pain as she slid her body along the mountain side.

Suddenly, there was an outcropping that hit her in just the right spot. She moaned and pressed herself against it, still wanting to get to the top, but the sensations she was experiencing here on the mountain side robbed of her will to go on. It felt so good, she lay down, grabbing at the hard mountainside, rocking on the outcropping faster and faster. The mountain rumbled again, and she felt its hands come to rest on her rocking hips. That was good. Then they moved to cup her bottom, pressing her down on the outcropping. That was so much better.

She felt the mountain move beneath her again, pushing up between her legs, taking her breath away as the hands squeezed and pressed her down harder. She still wanted to get to the top, but not if it meant moving from this place that felt so amazing. The mountain moved harder against her as she held on. Her eyes drifted shut and she lost sight of the top.

 _This is what Eric would feel like, if I ever dared to let myself touch him again_. That stray thought spurred her on, making her hips move faster, and in turn the mountain held her tighter, as if it was afraid she would lose her grip and fall to her death back to the bottom where she had started.

"Oh, Sookie," Eric said, causing her to awaken with a jerk and move with blurry speed away from him. She had fallen asleep again while he was reading to her and somehow she had wound up on top of him. _I climbed him like a mountain_ , she thought, forcing her fangs back up before he awoke completely and saw her there like that.

The evidence of what their contact had done to his body was very clear as he sat up and wiped his eyes. She felt a pang of loss that the contact had been broken so abruptly, then she slipped behind her mask of detachment while he was still getting his bearings. "I'm going to check the wards and start dinner," she said quickly, turning to go. He caught her hand before she could move.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his voice still deep and rumbly with sleep, still that deep and rumbly mountain voice. Her body was wet with need, her fangs were itching to come back down, and more than anything in the world she wanted to push that sleepy mountain back down and finish climbing it. _I am the farthest thing from all right_ , she thought.

"I'm fine," she said, making sure to keep her desires and needs under wraps so that they did not bombard Eric's empathic mind. She had learned to do that after what had happened when they first met. His reaction to her had been so strong because of her strong reaction to him. He was feeling what she was feeling and he had thought it was all him.

When she had realized that, she had made an extra effort to not let her emotions spill over onto the empath any more than she could help it. She felt so much for him that at times it was hard, especially since she had to keep at least a small pipeline open to keep him to realizing what she was doing. If he could feel nothing, he would know she was hiding everything. So, she let him feel the barest amount of her feelings for him, the genuine caring and affection that had been at the core of her since she first met Eric Northman.

If he knew he would be angry. She was sure of that. She was also sure that if he did feel something for her, she needed it to be what _he_ was feeling, and not what _she_ was feeling. She had to be sure it was him, that he wanted her. There had been moments where she was sure she saw it in his eyes, moments when she thought he might be falling for her, but he never said anything, and she refused to look into his thoughts for fear that she would find he still found her as unacceptable as he had on the roadside that night after she had torn apart the Dark Fae who had tried to kill him.

They had their routine, it was a good routine. It gave them structure. It grounded Eric and kept him from being overwhelmed by what he had learned. She had been so afraid that he was going to snap under the weight of the information he learned when he touched the crystal, but he had rebounded. Nothing was worth upsetting that, not even her desire and need for the man himself.

"I don't believe you," he said, waking up more, tugging her to sit back down beside him on the sofa.

"I need to go," she said, resisting his pull in more ways than one.

"I don't want you to go." His earnest blue eyes pushed at her mask and the walls around her emotions. She closed her eyes to hide from his beautiful face. To look at him would tear down all her defenses. She wanted to ask him what he wanted. She wanted to ask him if he wanted her, but, if he said no then the delicate balance that they had found with each other would be over. She pulled her hand away slowly.

"I need to check the wards." He sighed, but said nothing else to stop her. She left, opening her eyes as soon as she turned away. "Dinner in a couple of hours," she managed to sound cheery as she left.

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"We're all damaged. I'm damaged. Life does that to us. It does it when we aren't looking. It does it even when we are. We are the sum of our experiences, and those experiences make us into who we are. Sometimes I long to be the man I used to be. I remember him well. I was him, but he was not me. I didn't consciously change, it was something that happened to me, not something I did.

"I remember being new and fearless, because I didn't know what it was to be disappointed, or rejected, or hurt." He sat back, reaching for his cup of coffee trying to get to the heart of what he wanted to say. "I remember what being in love was like the first time. It was…perfect." He smiled as he thought of the boy had he had been then.

"I was open to everything, to anything and I believed. I believed that the right beat the might. I believed the white hats always won the day. I believed that doing the right thing was the only choice. I believed that feeling would last…forever.

"Like the rest of you out there, time and circumstance conspired to change that. First love ended, the bad guys won more than the good and might is, sadly, more often the winner when it faces down the right. I find it harder now to believe and almost impossible to be fearless in the face of my experiences.

"Still, in every breath, in every thought, I long for that perfection, that ability to jump in and never fear the consequences because I don't know that there are any!" He laughed and ran his hand through his hair, taking a sip of coffee. "The best I can manage these days is to sometimes convince myself that the consequences are worth the risk, and I think that is what life is about, you know?

"I think it's about spending your time and your life looking for that perfection that life tries so hard to convince you is not real, was not real and that you are not just some hopeless dreaming fool that wakes up every day, puts on his socks and trundles out into the world waiting to get creamed.

"I think that trying to live your life as though the world were the kind of place we dream it to be, rather than how it really is, is the best and only way to make that dream come true. I think that letting yourself being paralyzed by fear and doubt is the first and most important part of making sure the black hats don't win the day.

"It's not easy, in fact, it's damned hard, and that more than anything else reassures me that it is the right and only thing to do. They can kick my ass, hand me my hat and tell me that I am a fool, and I will spit in their eye and tell them to take that clap trap somewhere else, because they can't sell it here. Not to me, and not to any place that I am in, because here the dream wins. Here, we win because we stand together and nothing, not any one thing in this whole fucking world can knock us down except ourselves.

"Hold on tight out there in the dark, in the light, in the day and in the night. Hold on tight to who you are, what you believe and what you dream. Hold on tight to love if you find it. I don't just mean the romantic kind, I mean the feeling itself and whoever inspires it in you. Because that is what it is, inspiration. Inspiration to be better, to learn more, to move faster and go beyond any barrier that anyone sets for you, even, no _especially_ , the ones you set for yourself.

"In the darkest times, love will light the way. This is Eric Northman, still out here, holding onto the flickering flames of the man I was, while nurturing the new one for the man I want to be."

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"I need to leave for a while tonight," Sookie said over dinner, causing him to stop in mid-bite.

"Oh?" he said, raising an eyebrow at her. She nodded, not meeting his eyes. "Why is that?" He noticed she wasn't eating with her usual gusto, a clear indication that something wasn't right.

"There's something I need to do."

"Tell me, please." He said putting his fork down and preparing for something he was sure he didn't want to hear. She swallowed, unable to deny his command, but trying to find the words that would make this more palatable. After a few long moments she realized that there was no way he would find this acceptable no matter how she painted the picture.

"My nature requires blood. It has been too long since I have fed."

"And how do you do that?"

"I find a willing partner and take the blood I need." His face was a mask of shock.

"Where do you find these partners, and what does it mean when you say 'partner'?" She looked him in the eye now, her anger rising that he was pressing her to explain something that she did not care to say and he clearly did not care to hear. "Do you…kill them?"

"No, it's not like that."

"Then tell me how it is, Sookie." She sat back now, folding her arms over her middle.

"Older Eric, as you call him, taught me that it could be pleasant for the donor. That I could make it pleasant if I chose, for both of us." Eric sat back now, dinner forgotten as the questions flooded his mind. They came spilling from his lips before he could catch them and press them back down.

"Did you feed on Older Eric? Was it _pleasant_ with the two of you?"

"No, never."

"Then who?"

"Donors who were willing to teach me how to feed. There in the lab I had bagged blood, but before he would let me go he wanted to make sure I could care for myself appropriately, without causing damage to the donor."

"And by pleasant you mean sexual?" his voice was tight now, his obvious disapproval making her defensive.

"Sometimes," she said raising her chin at him, daring him to say the words that were hiding behind his lips but blazing his eyes.

"I see," he ground out through a locked jaw.

"I seriously doubt that you do," she fired back at him, her anger taking hold now over the rest of her emotions. She resented being questioned like this, but she also feared what this would do to the balance between them.

"Then why don't you explain it to me?"

"Because you don't really want to know," she spat at him.

"You're sure as hell right about that!" he fired back standing up so fast his chair slammed into the wall. She could feel how angry he was in their fading blood tie. It had been several months now since he had taken her blood. In another several she would not be able to feel him at all.

"I don't hurt them, Eric. I can be savage if I have to be, yes, but I don't have to be when I do this."

He looked down at the top of her head and wondered if she was listening to his thoughts right now _. Let me feed you, Sookie. You don't have to go find some stranger! Let me take care of you, Sookie, let me take care of you the way you take care of me!_ When she didn't move he was forced to conclude that she was not listening or she didn't find his offer acceptable.

For a moment he thought back to what he had said in his podcast not an hour earlier and scoffed at himself. _What do you really believe? What are you so fucking afraid of, Northman? How can you expect anyone else to listen to you when you don't even listen to your fucking self?_ He remembered how they had awakened from their nap, how good she felt to him, how they had found each other even in their sleep, their bodies wanting to be together.

If he were the man he was encouraging himself and everyone else to be he would tell her that he wanted to feed her, protect her as she did him. If he were the boy he had been he would jump in and never think that she would reject him again, that she would never tell him they couldn't be.

But he was just Eric Northman, he was just the man he was. The man who needed her. He needed her to keep him alive while he figured out how to save the world. He needed her to be there to walk with him, to let him read to her and sleep the most peaceful sleep he had ever had with her in his arms. He just fucking needed her. When stacked against the want of her, it was too much to risk.

If he pressed her for more, if he dared risk it then he might lose her all together. He could not let that happen. She was the only thing about all of this that made it bearable at all. If she had not been there to help him that day by the stream he had no idea where he would be right now. She stood while was lost in his thoughts.

"Sookie, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make this hard for you." She nodded still not looking him in the eye. "You won't be gone long?"

"No longer than I have to be." He placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Hurry back, please." She moved past him and out the backdoor shutting it quietly behind her.

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Eric paced the house for the first hour after she left, his frustration and crushing disappointment in his himself scratching at his mind. He had been careful in how he accessed his new memories of the future he had yet to live. Most of it was from fear at being crushed with truths he would rather not know, but some if it was because he was still accepting the path he now knew lay before him.

The first night Sookie had taken the Tempus Key, placed it on a leather cord and hung it around his neck before she placed him in bed. When he had awakened it was still there. He took it out from under his white button down shirt now and looked it, a frown on his face. Was there something more he could learn if he let himself remember the future? Could he get past his fears and learn things that would make things easier with the two of them? Would he see that she had lied to him and that she had been lovers with him in the future?

Moved by the need to prove that he hadn't totally lost his man card he sat down on the sofa, closed his hand around the Key and then closed his eyes, letting out a long slow breath to try and relax. Like a radio that had been playing as he slept, as soon as he let himself hear it the memories washed over him again in older Eric's voice.

 _The Tempus Key and its bearer are immune to paradox. This is true for each individual piece of the Key. Time may alter around the bearer and they will be the only ones who are conscious of the change. This is your timeline, now my timeline, so almost any change made it to will be outside of the paradox. The wildcard, the thing I can't see when I do this is what happens to my Sookie._

 _If this is the end of my line, as I suspect it will be the moment that 500K13 returns to the past, then the only question that matters to me is what happens to Sookie. You must save her if you can, because she is worth saving, but the paradox around 500K13 will require the Key to protect her from that moment on. Otherwise I fear she will be lost. Give her the Key, immediately. There is no way to know when Sookie, if she is still there, will cross your path_.

Eric gasped, fear clutching at his heart. She was out there and she didn't have the Key to protect her! His cowardice over being able to use the information he had been given had left her vulnerable. Jumping to his feet, every part of him screamed, calling out to her, he screamed, "SOOKIE!"


	12. My Graceless Heart

Walking out of that kitchen door was the hardest thing Sookie could recall doing. She needed to go, she needed Eric to understand and she hated the thought of leaving him alone, even for a moment. Everything that mattered to her was impossible. It tore at her, pulling her in so many directions at once she felt her legs wobble as the crossed the yard outside.

 _I am no fucking good to Eric of myself in this emotionally compromised state_ , she thought as she shifted into a falcon and started heading toward the small township of Glasgow on the other side of the mountain where she had killed the three wolves so long ago. Maybe there would be something there tonight that she could vent her frustration on? Maybe some blood would soothe the raging pain inside her? Maybe, if she could a partner worth making it "pleasant" for, it could prove to be what she needed, too?

Falcons did not cry. Falcons did not sigh. In this form she was safe from either humiliation, but the thoughts in her mind and the pain in her heart could not be shed with her skin, nor outdistanced with her incredible speeds in this form. All of those things traveled with her, wrapped in her memory of one tall, handsome, warm package labeled "Eric Northman". Even when he was miles away, he was all she could think of. Her cry pierced the night, making the small night animals below freeze as they waited for death from above to pass. Again, she screamed and then flew toward the small town.

Years ago, there had been a pool hall in Glasgow. There was a regular crowd of blue collar good old boys who loved to rack 'em when the whistle blew at five. There was also the occasional predator that liked to look for young kids who had no place better to be and no parents who gave a shit either way.

Sookie could have found them by the way the light reflected in their constantly searching hungry gazes, but of course she could also read their minds. More than one kind of predator roamed the nights back then.

There had been rumors of townsfolk that disappeared, but nothing substantial had ever been proven. The local sheriff was corrupt and lazy so with nothing obvious that led to any explanation other than they had picked up and moved on, he had let the investigations go cold. They had been evil men, no one had been really interested in finding them again.

There had also been some men there that she, in another life, would have let herself call friends. The place was called Merlotte's, and it was owned by Sam Merlotte, who was over all a nice guy, if a little shifty about the fact that he was himself a Shifter. Sookie had concealed her abilities from him, but he had lived in the delusion that way the hell out here in the middle of nowhere he didn't need to get dressed up to fool anyone.

For the most part he was right. Humans were the most plentiful species in this backwater, even if she was the dominant one. It amused her sometimes to swim like the mythical shark JAWS in their midst, silent, unknown. Sometimes she went in her natural form, sometimes she went in disguise, changing wheat colored hair for something darker, blue eyes for green, curvy figure for something less attention getting. Sometimes looking older, sometimes younger, sometimes male, depending on the preference of the evil she was about to turn into an all you can eat buffet.

Some nights, rare nights, she found a nice guy and danced with him, her eyes closed, her mind somewhere else, pretending he was someone else through the dance, through the ride in his jacked up country truck to some cricket filled back road turn around, usually next to a railroad track, where she made it pleasant for them to get what they both needed from each other.

If she said someone else's name, she glamoured the anger away with the memory of their sweet moments of hunger driven bliss. She could be savage, yes, most of the time she even preferred it, but not all the time. Sometimes, she could be downright tender.

She was unsure which she wanted tonight, the evil doer or the tender soon to be amnesiac lover, but found the choice was taken from her when she circled high above Merlotte's to see the doors and windows boarded over. _What a fucking day_ , she thought angrily as she turned north toward Lexington, the next most likely place to find what she needed to get back to Eric as quickly as possible.

She was caught in midflight by a feeling of such terror from Eric that she nearly fell from the sky. Screaming out her pain and fear she locked onto the fading blood tie and torpedoed back toward the farm. She arrived within minutes descending from the sky landing in the yard in her normal form, adding leather armor and calling Vengeance and Death to her side. "To me!" she bellowed into the night, blasting through the old backdoor at vampire speed to stop before Eric, her fangs down and hell in her eyes.

"What's wrong?" she asked, extending her senses to the surrounding area and finding no threat. Eric had been pacing when she burst in splintering the old back door into a hundred different pieces. He stopped mid-step and looked at her. Her long hair was windblown and she held two long swords in her hands. Her eyes were glowing and her fangs were fully extended.

This was the first time he had seen her like this. Needing to know what was happening Sookie looked into his mind to assess the threat. His thought were a jumble. _Paradox, Tempus Key, another Sookie._

"What other Sookie?" she blurted out taking a step toward him. The images in his mind scrambled while the tie turned into fear and regret that blew through the middle of her stealing her breath. _She doesn't know_ , she heard him think and felt him cringe.

"Tell me!" she commanded taking another step toward him. He froze, his eyes large with fear and something else. Still searching for what had scared him so badly she went back into his mind and heard the last thing she ever expected.

 _Even like this she is beautiful._

"You think I'm beautiful?" He nodded unable to articulate his thoughts beyond that. Taking a deep breath she threw Vengeance and Death in to the air commanding them, "Away!" Eric gasped as they disappeared in mid-air. She held her ground and looked him in the eye as she willed her fangs back up. He blinked at the snicking sound they made as they disappeared.

Before him stood the woman he had lived with now for several months. He took a step toward her, hesitant at first and then with more certainty. He surprised the hell out of both of them when he caught her up and pressed his lips to hers in a kiss that was a twin to the one they had shared so long ago outside the Sunshine Bar and Grille.

Sookie let herself enjoy it for a moment and then she pulled back, licking the taste of him from her lips as she looked up at him. "Eric, what the hell is going on?"

"Bring the fangs back," he said rather than answering her question looking intently at her lips.

"What?"

"Bring the fangs back," he said again, a look of wonder in his eyes. "I want to see them." He jumped a little when she let them back down, but held his ground. Slowly, his hand came up and his finger reached out to touch the left one. Gently, he ran his large finger down the slender razor sharp fang, exhaling slowly as he touched this unfamiliar part of her. She shivered and let her eyes drift shut in pleasure at his touch.

Entranced, he leaned down to her, tilting her head up he brought his lips to hers again and ran his tongue along the same path his finger had just taken. She jerked at the sensation and accidentally caught his tongue on the razor edge. A drop of blood hit her tongue before she pulled back, fighting for control.

The look on her face pulled him closer, not further away as she had anticipated. She placed her hands on his chest, afraid that she could protect him from everything but herself. She felt the pain of her rejection in their blood tie. "Why won't you let me take care of you?" Her eyes locked with his, wonder and confusion filling hers as she tried to comprehend what he was saying. "I thought… I remembered…I was afraid…I was afraid that I had lost you tonight because I was such a coward that I let you go out to get what you need instead of telling you that I wanted it to be me. I wanted to care for you as you do for me."

"I don't understand, Eric. What are you saying?"

"If you need blood, take mine."

"I can't," she said, her face crumbling a moment before she dropped her eyes to the floor.

"You'd rather have a stranger's blood?" She shook her head no but didn't look at him. "Then what, Sookie. Talk to me, tell me why you can't."

"It would be too confusing for us both to let that happen."

"Confusing? What do you mean?"

"I could do that with a stranger and it would mean nothing, but with you…"

"With me…?" She took a ragged breath.

"I already feel so much for you, Eric. To do that, to let that happen with you, it would make the fact that you don't want me unbearable." She slumped then, her shoulders rounding and all the fight going right out of her. She looked so tiny in front of him that if a few moments before he had not seen her with swords and fangs flashing he would not have believed this could be the same magical creature.

"Who the hell said I didn't want you?" Her gaze met his again.

"You…you, after you saw me, what I could do, what I was really like. You thought I was a monster." She felt his pain and regret again burning through their blood tie. He stared at her not believing what he was hearing. Thinking back he recalled that he had said some things to her that he was sorry for, that he hadn't meant but she knew that surely. She could read his fucking mind, for God's sake. He closed his eyes and sighed deeply, feeling his own shoulders round in defeat from the weight of everything between and around them. She changed the subject, hating to see him look so downtrodden.

"What happened tonight?" she asked him, placing a hand on his shoulder to steady him as she looked up and waited for him to explain why he had been so scared just a short time before. Refusing to meet her eyes he reached up and pulled the cord that held the Tempus Key over his head and placed it around her neck. Then he moved back to the sofa and fell down, his long legs stretching out in front of him, stretching out so far that one of them rested between her legs as she continued to stand a few feet away. _There was just so damned much of him_ , she thought as she tried to focus on his answer and not the body she had climbed in dream a few short hours before. He ran his hand through his hair and let his head fall back on the sofa.

"When you left I looked into the memories I had gotten from the crystal before it turned into the Tempus Key. I found…" he stopped, licking his lips.

"Another Sookie," she finished, her chin coming up sharply.

"Yes." Her lips twisted in anger.

"Who is she? Did Older Eric make more than just me?"

"No! At least, I don't think so. There is a lot I haven't let myself see."

"Then who was she?"

"I don't know really. I just know that if you meet her and are not wearing the Key the paradox will snuff you out like a light." Forcing her emotions away, cursing their uselessness again she tried to reason her way through what he was telling her.

"You're going to meet her, aren't you?" He shrugged. "And at some point in Older Eric's timeline she died?" He just looked at her. "And if she doesn't die then Older Eric doesn't make me, 500K13?"

"That seems to be the case." She could feel his pain, but she pushed that away, too, on the edge of something large and dark. "And he asked you to save her, thus creating the paradox of her not dying, and me never being created."

"I really hadn't gotten that far, time travel gives me a nosebleed. That does sound about right though."

"So, then you will love her, as he did." He sat up suddenly and reached a long arm out to grab her hand.

"Stop thinking and come here before you go down the wrong road." She let him pull her to him, and hated how good it felt when he rested the side of his face on her middle and his arms came up around her back.

"I don't her. I know you. _You_ are _my_ Sookie." Her hands came up to his head, her fingers threading through the stands of his hair. "It was _you_ who stood beside me from the moment I was born. It was _you_ who saved me when I lost all hope. It's _you_ who takes my breath away when I think of you. For me there is just _you_ , _my_ Sookie."

"But"- he cut her off.

"No buts, no ifs or ands. I can't see the future but I know that whatever happened before has changed because _you_ are here, and _you_ have changed _me_." He turned his head slowly, resting his chin on her middle as he looked up at her, his blue eyes so soft and so serious it made her dizzy. "I know that she fought with Older Eric in the original timeline, and that she gave her life to save him. I know that she helped him in many ways. That was then, this is now and you, you help me. I need you, not some woman I have never met before, and may not meet again.

"I know that I want you to let me take care of you, as you do me. I want to be closer to you, my Sookie. I know that I don't want to do this without you. I am not sure I can do this without you." So many things rushed through her, fear, doubt, need and hunger. She still needed to feed and here he was, the one man she had ever really wanted offering himself to her. It was too much.

"Remember," she said softly, "How you felt when you were singing to me? All that emotion, all that love and need that was churning around inside you?"

"Yes," he said his tone matching hers.

"That was me. Those were my feelings that you were experiencing. I fucked up, Eric and your empathy was overcome by me. You weren't feeling those things for me. I was feeling them for you." A tear slid down her cheek as she said the words that she had used as walls and shields in her mind for months to keep her distance from him. "I am so sorry to have confused you like that. I've tried to stop. Since then I make sure that I keep that all locked down so that you are not forced to process my feelings and confuse them with yours." He frowned, listening to her, hearing her, even if she wasn't hearing herself.

"It was the blood tie you accidentally formed with me when you sucked the bullets out of my back. I wasn't used to processing your emotion and it weakened my reserves at first. It tore down all the walls I had put in place to protect me."

"Protect you?" She sighed then and leaned down to kiss his forehead as she had the night she tucked him in after Lorena's attack. His eyes closed a moment at the touch of her lips, letting himself feel her lips and her love that came with her kiss. He gasped as it all ran through him.

"I've always loved you, Eric. At first, it was almost motherly, or at least how I imagine that feeling to be, since I have never been one. I have seen it on others and in movies but since I never had a mother then I really wouldn't know." She pulled back and looked down at him again, one hand moving around to cup his cheek. Her hand barely covered half of it.

"Over the years it changed and grew into something else. It changed into wanting to be closer to you, wanting you to know me as I did you. I told you that you were my father, my brother my son. You are the only thing that has ever been real to me in this thing I call a life. I've looked for what to call this thing I feel for you. Love is too small a word for what fills my graceless heart when I think of you, Eric Northman." He licked his lips slowly, not moving his face or his arms, still holding her close to him.

"You said that after the Sunshine Bar and Grille you kept it all back from me?"

"Yes. All of it."

"Then I have been falling in love with you because of how _I_ feel, not because of how _you_ feel." His words hit her like a bolt in the chest. "You said that you could feel me in the blood tie?"

"Yes."

"Then, feel me now." He closed his eyes and thought of all that she meant to him. How she made him feel when she was near. How she made him feel when they shared meals and reading time together. How she had made him feel today when he awoke to find her splayed out in his body touching him like she had finally figured out what to do with him. The heartfelt emotion and physical lust left her struggling to breathe as he pushed it all to her as hard as he could through this mystical tie that he did not understand, but believed would say more than any words ever could about his feelings. When she started gasping for air above him he opened his eyes and looked at her. "That's…all…me. Do you feel it, Sookie?"

"Oh, yes!" she rasped out, her face flush with his desire.

"Good. Now, let me feel you, too." Looking into his eyes, one last chance for him to pull back, to change his mind, to demand that she put it all away once and for all. "Now," he said, pushing her to surrender. That final word blew apart her walls of stone and delusion that she was not completely and totally his. It hit him like a wave from the ocean, pulling him down, spinning him around as it pummeled him on the sand below.

Her feelings were sharp and deep and filled with resonance so deep that it rocked his very frame. He was drowning in something so large and comforting that he understood how right she had been. Love was too small a word for her graceless heart. If indeed her heart was graceless it was only because she had given it all to him that he might survive and flourish. It ran beyond mother, sister, and daughter into places that people dream of and never fully remember. The fleeting glimpses of this place told them that they were missing something and made the rest of their lives achingly unquiet but in the naked light of day was so far away as to seem ridiculously impossible.

Eric had been looking for this feeling his whole life and never known what he was looking for. Even now, unable to name it still, he only knew that he had found it, and that he planned to never let it go.

"Come here," he said with a deep voice when he caught his breath. The sound of the ocean roared through his mind as she leaned down to kiss him, to share a breath of air with a drowning man.


	13. Love You Right Back

_"Come here," he said with a deep voice when he caught his breath. The sound of the ocean roared through his mind as she leaned down to kiss him, to share a breath of air with a drowning man._

13\. Love You Right Back

So small. Everything about him made her feel so small. The size of his body compared to hers. The size of his love now as well, pounding through his veins to hers, his heart to hers. Even the strength of his words and beliefs made her feel small. If someone had asked her if feeling small would have been all right with her she would have told them no. She was supposed to be confident and strong and to always know what was going on and what needed to be done. Nothing about her was small from the top of her magical head to the tip of her engineered toes she was larger than life. She was designed that way, to withstand anything. She had been created to be fast, smart and strong and never say die or quit because when those became her truths she would no longer be able to speak them. Words would be beyond her, as would the rest of life.

All that should have made him less appealing, but it was the way that he picked at the core of her, his big long fingers looking for a loose thread to unravel her was one of the major attractions for her. He was a puzzle, a large, warm, enigma that made the necessity of keeping him constantly at the center of her gaze a gift rather than a chore. The way she had set about to memorize him left her excited and always longing for more. What made him larger than life to her was that always gave her more. Growing before her very eyes, adding layers to himself that she enjoyed peeling back, and delighted in finding the same warm and caring core beneath the new unknown.

He was above all things a good man. He was not a perfect man, but he was consistently a kind man. The strength of him originating from a place that she could not truly comprehend.

All of this was running through her mind until her lips touched his and then there was no more running. His large hand came up from her back and cupped the back of her head even as he tilted his and deepened his kiss. Her hands cupped his face as she pressed closer, so into the feeling of his mouth on hers that she missed him pulling her onto his lap and how her arms slid around his neck like they had come home there every night.

 _I was such a liar_ , she thought as she took control of the kiss, now tilting her head and pressing her lips into his. _I didn't have this under control for a second!_

"Stop thinking," his whisper deep and strained as he lips moved to her jaw and then around to her neck right under her ear. "Stop wondering. Just feel me and believe." This particular spot always made him shiver from the sensation, so he took a chance that she might feel similarly about it. A second later his limps curled into a smile of triumph as her body was wracked with tiny delicious spasms that pulled a moan from her lips and started her hips rocking against him seeking more friction.

Her fangs had gone up while she had tried to explain how he was only feeling her emotions, but when she shivered they snapped back down. He continued to use his mouth on that spot under her ear shivering himself as he imagined her biting him, surprised at the rush of arousal pressing inside him at the idea of her piercing his flesh. It was such an opposition to how these things usually went for him. He entered, always the stronger of the two; he was the one who needed to be conscious of his touch and his strength.

If he had tried to imagine this scenario before this moment he was sure he would have felt emasculated in the face of this creature in his arms. She could crush him, or magic him away, or drain him, or change into a lioness and eat him alive, but instead she clung to him, rubbing against him and on him, intoxicated by his kisses and hypnotized by his words. To seduce such a creature was a lonely musing in the dark, but to have one such as she actually return your love? Nothing, _nothing_ had ever made him feel more like a man.

In her arms he was the lion tamer, the jungle lord, and the explorer of dark and light continents. He could do anything and everything as long as she loved him, simply because she loved him. There was no greater proof of his masculinity or of his worthiness than the affections of the creature in his arms.

His large hands tangled in her hair, fisting it, an easily misunderstood gesture of seeming dominance which was actually a plea that she never leave him. He needed her and he wanted her, but more than that he wanted to know her as she had told him she wanted to be known. Oh, the things he had learned already. He knew that she liked cheese and tuna and above all else, Twinkies. The image of her in the cookie isle searching for snack cakes caused a wave of joy to rise in his chest. Overwhelmed, he broke their kiss, panting. "You are so fucking amazing, Sookie," he said quietly, resting his forehead on hers, his eyes closed as she just breathed in the scent of her and enjoyed the feeling of her in his arms, pressed tightly to his body.

"I was just thinking the same thing about you," she answered him blazing a trail of kisses up his large jaw, purring a little each time her tongue slipped out to taste his skin. His lioness reminded him more of a kitten in her delicate quick licks of him.

"You will take my blood then?" he gasped as she latched onto his neck in the same spot he had initiated on her moments before. Her gentle sucking, the light scratch of her fangs on this sensitive spot almost undid him right there. He wanted to be inside her so fucking bad, every movement of her hips against him, every touch of her small pink tongue took another piece of his reason like raindrops under a wiper blade.

"Mmm-hmm," she moaned in the affirmative as she came back around to his lips again. She was so open and so completely trusting he felt his heart crack a little, making it hard to breathe for a moment. It came to him then that this, this one time, this first time, needed to be all about her. She had given her whole life to him. This one time he could put her first. He wanted to please her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life.

"How do I get you out of this sexy armor?" he rasped in her ear, his hot breath making her shiver again. She tensed in his arms a moment and then there was nothing under his hands but her warm skin. "So soft," he sighed in pleasure as his hand caressed her neck and then down to the top of her hips. "So good," he said before he kissed her again. Wanting her to feel how good she felt to him, he pressed his pleasure to her making her sigh and break the kiss to arch her back. Her perfect pink nipples presenting themselves to his lips. Was it accident that she fit him so perfectly? Was it by design that everything about her called to him? Gently taking one of her nipples into his mouth and sucking. The taste of her filling his senses in a new way, he grabbed on to what was and let go of all his questions.

She was here. She was perfect. She was his. Anything beyond that was irrelevant. "I…I can take your clothes, too?" She said as she arched into his lips. Giving her hard nipple one last tug, he let go to speak.

"Later," and then he took the other one his mouth giving it the same gentle treatment he had the first. Her fingers tangled in his hair again. The same plea he had made earlier, underscoring that this was best. This was right. When he let go, he placed a soft kiss in the middle between her breasts and sighed in pleasure. "Tonight, I want to take care of you, Sookie."

"You do," she told him, pulling her head back up to pin him with her gaze. He smiled at her, and then the hand not resting on her hip slipped down between her thighs.

"I want to make this pleasurable for you, my love," he told her as he brushed his fingers across her damp folds. Her incoherent noises of pleasure guiding him to discovering just how to touch her. He started in tight small circles around her engorged clitoris. Her mouth forming a perfect O as she fell forward, taking his lips again. Her tongue unconsciously picking up the rhythm of his finger on her. He broke his pattern and pressed hard on her before resuming his tight circles now counterclockwise. He felt her grow wetter from his touch and without thinking he slipped one of his long fingers down to her entrance and probed there gently.

Her reaction was electric. "Eric!" she screamed, her body pressing down to take him deeper and he obliged her, sliding in as deep as he could get while his thumb continued to work her clit. He was so hard he felt dizzy, the room was spinning as she moved in his lap. Still, he found the will to gently pull her face to his neck.

"Let me give you what you need," he said to her, curling his finger inside her, knowing he had found just the right spot when she sobbed in his shoulder struggling to breathe. Her slick channel was massaging his finger now, fluttering around him in a way that made his cock weep bitter drops of pre-cum, crying to feel what his finger was experiencing. He groaned as his body tortured his good intentions. He pressed his thumb against her one more time, curling his finger inside her as she sank her fangs into the secret spot of his neck.

She was like silk on his hand and in his neck. He felt her suck and then she exploded in his arms moaning and rocking as she took him into her by the mouthfuls. He came beneath her, his hand holding her face to his neck as his hips rose up bucking on the couch. She held him tightly and took another suck at his neck. Her body squeezing his finger as her orgasm went on and on. "Love you," he said into her hair as his vision dimmed. He let himself fall back holding her to him as she fed.

When he fell back on the couch beneath her and she felt his body go slack Sookie was knocked from her euphoria, feeling dizzy herself as the most intense pleasure she had ever experienced turned into terror. "Eric?" she said, raising a hand to his face. "Eric?" she called again, shaking him slightly, her thoughts screaming that she had taken too much. "Have I killed you?" she screamed at him in a high state of panic. In her terror she slapped his face, "ERIC!" Slowly his eyes blinked open, trying to focus on the hysterical woman in his arms.

"Waz wrong?" he mumbled, his arms feeling too weak to come up around her and console her, he tried though. When they fell back to the sofa like deadened stumps she really started to freak out. "ERIC!" she screamed again. Then there was a wet sound of tearing flesh and something sweet and thick was in his mouth. He swallowed on reflex. One mouthful, sliding down his throat, sweet and salty, like the ocean smelled but tasting oh so much better. Sensation returned to his limbs and his hand came up to hold her wrist to his mouth so he could get another drink of this elixir. He growled around the wrist in his mouth, holding it closer, drinking another mouthful before she pulled it away.

He growled in protest reaching to pull her arm back, and again in disappointment when he saw that the wound had healed. His mind started to right itself then, intellect rising over instinct once again. He blinked and looked around his eyes coming to rest on her tear stained face. Her mouth was still covered in his blood, her fangs still down from where she had torn her wrist open. "What happened?" he asked her. She just looked at him, getting herself under control now that she could see he was all right. He asked her again. "Sookie, what just happened? Is it always like that?" She shook her head and he heard her fangs recede. She continued to look at him as if she was waiting for something.

"What is it, Sookie?" he asked her more softly, his hand coming up to her face. "I've had your blood before. It's ok," he said trying to soothe her. She let out a breath of air from her pursed lips. Her eyes growing large as she searched for the words.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I shouldn't have taken so much. It's just that…It's never been like…that was new for me," she finally blurted out as her tongue came out to clean her lips of his blood. He smiled.

"It's new for me, too. I've never been a sippy box before." He tried to joke to lighten the moment but she didn't return it. "It was good though, right? You're ok now, right?"

"Yeah," she said dropping her eyes down to his chest refusing to meet his gaze. He had seen a million things since she had swept into the diner and teleported him away but he had never seen this. She was unsure. She was undone. She was scared.

"Tell me," he said bringing her eyes up to his.

"I didn't mean to do it."

"Do what?"

"I wasn't thinking straight. I'm so sorry, Eric."

"Tell me," he said again his tone growing more serious and stern.

"We just started a blood bond." The unknown words spiked ice into his heart.

"What does that mean? Am I going to be a vampire now?" his voice growing louder as he started to rise from the couch. Exhibiting the strength that he had been thinking of a short time ago as not being emasculating she held him down and wrapped herself around him in an effort to calm him and get him to listen to the answer to his question.

"No, you are not going to be a vampire." He stopped struggling and relaxed a little.

"Then what does it mean, Sookie?"

"Older Eric said that vampire blood bonds are strong psychic connections between a vampire and a human that happen when they exchange blood at the same time. He said that if they did it three times it becomes a permanent connection."

"So, what does 'a strong psychic connection' mean exactly?" Her eyes still round with fear and uncertainty looked into his.

"In a normal human vampire exchange it means that they are eventually able to feel each other's feelings and moods and locations." He relaxed a little more.

"But…we already can do that with the blood tie and the empathy?" She nodded still not relaxing. "So, what's the problem?"

"The problem," she said licking her lips slowly, "Is that I don't know what the increased magic of the new bond will do on top of the connection we already have."

"Well, how bad do you think it could be?" She shrugged. Forcing himself to be calm in the face of this new unknown he took a deep breath and then pulled her to his chest. "Maybe it will be a good thing? Maybe now that you know my feelings for you and I know yours for me that this is just the next step in us being closer, in me knowing you like you wanted." He was running his hands up and down her back in a comforting gesture. Her arms came up around his neck and she held him tightly as though it might be for the last time.

"What if…"she started and then stopped. He continued to stroke her back, wordlessly encouraging her to go on. "What if you don't like me anymore when you really know me?" He could feel her fear pressing up between their bodies and he fought the urge to move back and give it room.

"You pretty much know everything about me that there is to know, don't you? Things that I don't even know because you know me from the future, right?" She nodded her head, bobbing it on his shoulder and he thought he heard her sniffle a little. "And did you always like me, Sookie?" Slowly, she pulled back from him until she could look him in the eye again. Her hand coming back up to his worried face to soothe away the worry with her fingers.

"No, but I always loved you, Eric." He brought her hand to his lips and placed a gentle kiss on her palm, keeping their gazes locked.

"Then all I ask is that you give me the same chance to love you right back."


	14. My Glass Coffin

There is nothing quite like swimming on a hot mid-summer day. The water was warm, caressing her skin beneath the surface while the droplets on her neck and shoulders produced a chill when the wind stirred. The kiss of the sun covered all the places his lips had left or were intrepidly working toward. She floated in his embrace, free and tethered in what to her was the perfect place. "You have freckles," he said as he kissed her bare shoulders moving down toward the cleft of her breasts.

"I do not," she argued, her eyes closed letting herself be kissed by the wind as much as him. He chuckled but continued kissing her. The curve of his lips on her skin from his smile tickled and she felt herself smile in return as she tilted her head arching her back to give him a better angle. A large finger slowly caressed her shoulder, drawing a pattern she couldn't quite follow because of his distracting kisses.

Below the water, her legs were wrapped around his waist, and she was really glad she had let him talk her into coming to his old childhood 'swimmin' hole'. There had been dozens of them in the area where he grew up and he had spent countless summer days in them growing up. She had never been able to swim with him, but she had always been nearby keeping watch. More times than there were numbers in the universe she had dreamed of being in the cool waves with him like this.

The place was called The Blue Hole, and it was a fair description. A mini lake in what looked like it might once been a quarry. Surrounded by steep granite walls on all sides that offered fabulous points to leap from and that created the illusion that they were all alone in the world. The entrance to this place was a pull off on the side of a dirt road way back in the mountains. You step out and then jump in from the ten foot drop on the edge. Getting out was a winding path that climbed back up to the road, but no one thought of that until it was time to go. When you were in The Blue Hole leaving was the last thing on your mind.

They had left the windows down on the car and the radio on so they could hear the music while they swam. The sounds encouraged the notion that they were the only two people in the world and for a moment she let herself feel the pure joy of a dream come true. Then his searing kiss took her mind away from everything but him.

Last night after sharing blood he had gone to take a shower and she had fixed the back door that had been destroyed when she burst in thinking he was in trouble. Then they had settled on the sofa in their pajamas and talked for most of the night. He had asked her to explain exactly what she could do with all her magical powers and genetic gifts.

"Are you sure you want to know?" she had asked him, burrowing her head into his shoulder and bringing her hand up to his chest. He had covered her hand with his and kissed her forehead in answer. "They weren't taking any chances so they made me from the best of all the supernaturals so that I could protect you. From the Fae I have the gifts if Light, Illusion, Sword fighting, and of course Teleportation, though that last one is a doozy."

"So the swords you called"-

"Vengeance and Death." He paused looking down at her.

"Vengeance and Death?"

"Their names."

"Those are Fae? That is how you can send them away into nothing?"

"And call them back, too." She said looking up at him seriously.

"Where do they go?"

"Someplace Niall called The Nether." He looked at her. "Niall was the Fae who trained me in their use and my other Fae gifts as well. He was…is I guess, a Light Fae Prince."

"OK, what else?"

"From the Demons I gained Fire, Speed and Magic. I can hurl fire bolts or"-

"Burn things like you did Lorena back in Shreveport?" She nodded.

"With the magic I can do spells and when that is combined with Fae magic I am adequately talented in the arts of magic." Thinking of her shields in the diner that had stopped bullets and her infamous sleeping spells he supposed adequate was one way to put it.

"From the Shifter I gained the ability to imprint on any live creature and take its form, but because of the Were genes there is one form that I am more at home in than any other."

"Wolf?" he guessed.

"No, bear."

"Bear? You turn into a Were Bear? What kind?"

"Grizzly." He pulled back to look at her and see if she was serious. Her expression said she was.

"I want to see." She rose from the couch and looked around the room.

"It's going to be little cramped in here," she said and then a second later in the room with him was a full grown grizzly bear. She stood stock still, not moving, desperately wanting to not scare him or break anything else. He had looked at her, and then slowly reached out a hand to touch her long bear nose. She had growled in pleasure at his touch on her golden brown fur.

"Fuck," he said softly and stood to move around her slowly running his hands through her thick glossy coat. She was so soft he could barely believe it. He got the distinct impression that if there had been room she would have flopped over for a good belly rub and it made him laugh. "This would have been way cooler than a golden retriever," he said, mostly to himself. "Mom would have shit a brick!" He thought the gruff growly sounds coming from her were her laughing, too as they imagined his parents coming home and finding Sookie in this form laid out across his bedroom floor where Lily had slept.

He moved back to his seat on the couch and opened his arms to the bear. A second later Sookie stepped into them and they snuggled back down on the sofa. "What's it like to be a bear?" She thought a moment.

"I can show you sometime, but it has to be outside where I can really be a bear. Where I can run and revel in that form with all my senses heightened. I will do it for you so you can feel it sometime, if you want?"

"Yes! That would be incredible!" He was so excited at the idea that in the fledgling bond they now had he nearly overwhelmed her with his excitement and joy at the prospect of experiencing bear-hood with her. "What else can do you, Sookie?"

"I also have the speed boost of the Vampire, as well as the healing and need for blood, which you have experienced firsthand. It is necessary for the healing part. The vamp speed is just an extra since I have Demon speed but I needed to be able to heal quickly to be an effective guardian and the price for that is the blood." He could feel how sorry she was for what had happened earlier. So he pushed to her again that he was not the least bit sorry, not for any of it.

"So, you were engineered from five different races of supernaturals? But how? I mean I doubt that these species are genetically compatible?"

"No, that is where the science came in. Somehow they found a way to make them compatible with their inherent gifts intact. I don't understand it all. Maybe Older Eric explained the science to you, but he never explained it to me. My earliest memory was of training in how to use these gifts. It was all I knew until I was sent back to find you."

"You said you had an accelerated growth rate? That you were roughly eight human years old when you escaped the lab and went outside. How old were you truly when that happened?"

"Four months." He thought about that and quickly realized that he could never truly comprehend her life. At four months he was barely sitting up and she was already training.

"Wow." He held her closer. "So, you reached full maturity when you were how old?"

"Sixteen months. I had matured to the appearance you see now. Roughly a twenty-four year old female." Trying to do the impossible math in his head he hesitated a moment. "I was sent back to about a year before your birth when I was twenty-four months old."

"So you were two years old when you came back to 1980?" His tone was incredulous.

"Yes. In actual time I was two, but I was then as I am now. I will be this way until I die." Her words of death disturbed him and he shoved them away to focus on the immediate situation of the woman in his arms who was in straight time thirty-seven to his thirty-four years of age, and who didn't look a day over her mid-twenties.

"You had no life at all did you?" he asked her, feeling incredibly guilty for what he had done, no what he _would_ do to her in the future. "You never got to be a kid, Sookie." The regret so clear in his voice that all she could think was to make it better.

"Of course I did. I was a kid with you, Eric." He frowned not understanding.

"I was there with you when your parents read you stories at bed time and I was right there with you for your childhood adventures! When you learned of sleeping Princesses in glass coffins and thought of all the ways to rescue them it was me as Lily that you dressed as your horse so that you could be the Knight in Shining Armor!" He shifted on the sofa sliding down to face her as she told her earnestly how wrong he had it all.

"I remember," he said slowly as he looked deep into the past. "I stole my Mom's mega roll of aluminum foil and wrapped a stick with it to make sword. Then I made a hat for you and covered you in it, too so that my steed had armor!"

"Yes," she said smiling at him. "You did and together you and I trekked around the farm looking for the sleeping Princess to save her from the evil witches spell." He actually blushed as he thought of what his five year old self had subjected her to. "Stop it," she told him, kissing his cheek softly. "It was a grand high adventure and I loved every minute of it."

"I bet you did," he said sarcastically.

"No, I did. I really did! In your imagination I found something I had never experienced before. Innocence and hope that life could be more than training and detached coldness. You really, really wanted to save that Princess, and in that I saw the good heart that beats in you. The heart that still beats in you and makes you the incredible man you are."

"You don't have to say that to make me feel better," he told her feeling uncomfortable from the memory and her words.

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it, Eric." He looked at her, and realized that she was not one to waste words. If she was saying it then she meant it. "What you didn't know then was that I was the Princess in the glass coffin. You were saving me, Eric. You were saving me." He had kissed her then and imagined that he felt the glass coffin break around her. "You always save me," she told him as she held him close and let the magnitude of her words sink in.

"Mom was really pissed about that aluminum foil," he said finally. "I can still feel the wallop she laid on my butt when she saw you all bedecked standing beside me in the yard." Sookie laughed.

"Yes, I was glad to be innocent bystander on that one."

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"What are you thinking, my Princess?" he asked her as the bobbed in the cool blue water tangled together, floating more than swimming. The sound of the Dum Dum Girls singing Lord Knows floated down to her echoing on the rock walls around them making the scene even more surreal and perfect.

"Take me home," she told him, her tone telling him that she wasn't done, just done being here when they had a bed waiting for them back home. Immediately, he started moving them toward the path that would lead up to the car and their towels. He helped her out when she reached the edge and hand and hand they raced up the path together. They did not speak on the short drive back to the house, there was no need.

As one they went in to the shower and took turns washing each other off from their 'swimmin' hole' adventure. Toward the end their touching led to kissing and the shower lasted a little longer than was truly necessary. After last night it was unspoken that they wanted to go slow with each other. It was only the cold water than reminded them to relocate to the bed. He toweled her hair until it was nearly dry and she rubbed his long lean body in slow circles drying him with reverence, hypnotizing them both with her slow gentle gestures.

They had fallen asleep talking last night without resuming what they had started when she fed from him. The feelings flared up again though, strong between them and they were right back in the same spell that had taken them away the night before. His hands rubbed her shoulders as they lay naked side by side on his bed.

"I can feel you," he said softly as his hand slipped down her side tracing gentle patterns with his fingertips. She knew he was speaking of the empathic connection and not the sensation of his glorious fingers on her skin. She licked her lips.

"I can feel you, too in the blood."

"I love touching you," he said, moving so that he could tangle his other hand in her damp locks and move her mouth toward his. Her eyes met his with a question.

"Is…is this the beginning, finally?" she asked him, as she had in his dream. He answered her with a kiss and moved his body over hers. _Yes_ , he thought and prayed she could hear him or feel his answer in the kiss. Her soft sigh when she opened her legs for him to rest between them reassured him that she had heard him.

"How do you do it all, Sookie?" he asked her gasping for breath from her fiery kisses.

"Because, it's for you, Eric. I can do anything for you." He kissed her again and let his hand slide down to see if she was ready for him. When he slid into her for the first time they both moaned at the feeling. When he started to move watching her face to make sure she was feeling what he was feeling he felt himself slip away into the motion of their bodies and the mysteries of their past and future. She pulled him back to her with her hands in his hair claiming his lips again. Then she let her hands wander down to his hips pulling him closer to her, pulling him deeper into her. He started moving faster. She brought her legs up and crossed them over his lower back.

The change in angle and sensation of sinking deeper into her made him say her name soft and panting. She answered him in the same tone. The feeling was unlike anything he had experienced before in the arms of a woman. He felt so close to her, so real with her that anything else no longer mattered. He wanted her to bite him again. Granting his wordless desire her heard her fangs come down and his cock jerked inside her as he remembered what it had felt like to bitten by her. Moaning he pulled out of her warm slick body and sat back on his knees between her legs.

She saw the look in his eyes and it reassured her that he wanted her despite his abrupt departure. When he held a hand out to her she took and he pulled her to him kissing her roughly as he positioned his cock to enter her again. They both sighed in relief when they were rejoined, his hands holding her hips to help her move up and down his hard shaft. The feel of her hard nipples rubbing his chest made them both a little crazier, pushing them to press their bodies closer and deeper together.

In mid-thrust he turned his long graceful neck to the side and pressed it to her kiss swollen lips. "Bite me," his ragged whisper rose up over the sound of their bodies moving together seeking release. He felt her tongue lick him once and then the delicious sensation of her fangs sinking into him brought him right to the edge of bliss. Her first suck felt like her lips around his cock and he exploded deep inside her, pulling her down hard on him sending her over the edge too, squeezing him hard inside her.

Lost in the sensation of her sucking his neck and milking his cock he turned into her neck and sure that he only meant to kiss her was surprised when he felt her blood in his mouth. The sensation brought them both to orgasm again as she burrowed tighter against him and he pressed deeper into her, arms locked around each other holding on for dear life.

A few moments later he felt her neck heal and her licking his wounds, neither moving from their embrace. Then he placed a soft kiss over the place where he had bitten her. "This _is_ the beginning," he said in her ear as he stroked her hair and was rewarded by feeling her joy come barreling at him through their empathic connection.

 _I love you_ , she thought as she held him closer.

"I love you, too, Sookie," he said. A second later it registered to them that she had not spoken out loud. He just held her tighter.

 _It'll be ok, Sookie. I'll make sure of it,_ he thought to her. She relaxed her body against him and he held her tighter.


	15. Things I Learned In School

"Too many things and people tell us what to think. It's a touchy subject because how can I talk about it without crossing that line too?" Eric took a sip of his coffee and then rubbed his stubbly face as he thought about what he wanted to share in tonight's podcast. "I want you, dear listeners, to think of me as someone sharing their thoughts and experiences, not because I think that you need me to tell you what to think but rather in the hope that I could offer an unusual perspective. A perspective that might add dimension and color to your own." He chuckled, "Which of course means that before you get to have an opinion I think you have to do your own leg work.

"Yes, that means you have to get up off your sofa, or use your computers for something other than porn. Before you panic now, I don't mean all the time, just sometimes." He smiled at the thought of all the shocked little faces who had calmed down at the _sometimes_ instead of the _all the time_. "Maybe there was once a time when we could trust the information that gets shoved down our throats 24/7 on news networks, maybe there wasn't. I do know that we can't now. There is no journalistic perspective anymore, there are only agendas and the information that you get is only information that someone else has decided that it's ok for you to have."

He sipped his coffee again and shifted in his chair, putting his feet up on the desk where he recorded his nightly messages. His wireless headset mic allowed him more freedom of movement than any set up he ever had in the studio. Aside from missing the paycheck and the direct audience interaction this was really a much sweeter setup. He did still have email from his listeners and he took that responsibility every bit as seriously as he had when he was working at WKDED. If what was on their minds was important enough to take the time to reach out then it was important enough for him to respond. He felt his heart squeeze a little in his chest when he thought of how he owed this podcast dynasty to Sookie.

He had been broadcasting like this now for months and he had over several thousand subscribers with more coming every day. Even in the backwoods of Virginia on the run it still seemed that he had something to say that people wanted to hear.

"It's easy to let the one side of something that you are being shown be the only side you look at it, but we all know in our hearts that there is always more than one side to anything. We also know from looking at our own lives that nothing is ever simple. Sure, we want it to be. Sometimes we need it to be because we just feel like we can't take another single fucking thing. I get that. I get like that. I also think that is the trouble spot for us as a society. When you feel busted and broken down it becomes so much easier to just accept the things you are told as truth. It becomes easier to pretend that there is only one side. That is until you find yourself in that same spotlight. Until you become the one who is only seen in single dimension with a story that no one wants to take the time to hear. Then my friends, you can see that everyone who came before you in this singular spotlight was a multi-dimensional feeling and caring individual." He stood then, and started to pace as he spoke, coffee still in hand.

"When I was growing up my parents used to tell me that things had been different in their day. They told me things like a man was innocent until proven guilty and that he was tried before a jury of his peers in court, not in the press. Think about that for a moment. If, and I say if because I believe but I don't know, if the press is deliberately only showing you one side of an event, a side that was chosen for you to know, how can we as citizens in a supposedly free country think for a moment that we know anything of the truth around that event?

"Don't we have an obligation to make sure that we do know the truth? The whole truth? The absolute truth before we form an opinion about anything? We live in a glorious age of technology where we can meet and speak to people around the world in minutes! We should be the best informed generations that have ever walked this third rock from the sun, but are we? Or are we just regurgitating someone else's uninformed opinions on topics that we are only allowed to see from the side, if at all?

"And for those of us who are looking, what are we looking at? Are our lives enriched and made better by Keeping up the Kardashians? We have this incredible tool of connectivity and awareness and we use it to star stalk and make snarky comments about what some starlet wore on the red carpet. Does this make us better or more informed to know that so and so was wearing a certain designer label or that they hated themselves so much that they had plastic surgery or Botox?

"Are we allowing ourselves to be manipulated and anesthetized to the truth? Do we do it willingly and perhaps even gratefully because again, we can't stand another single second of our own existence and responsibilities for that existence?" He paused, looking out the window and seeing Sookie coming across the yard from doing one of her constant perimeter checks.

"We are, each of us entitled to our opinions and we have both the right and the means to share them. But don't we have the obligation to make them meaningful and thoughtful, if not downright thought provoking? Shouldn't we be inspiring each other to grow and be open to truly knowing the world around us and what is happening in it? Shouldn't the people we call heroes be worthy of that title? Shouldn't we strive to emulate those who embody in their everyday lives the traits that we now only expect from fictional characters?

"Who are we that we can walk out a movie theatre pumped on watching Captain America stand for truth and justice and turn a blind eye to the person being mugged in front of the theatre as we come out? Who are we that in order for us to rise up we have to knock someone else down?" He ran his hand through his hair in frustration and turned back to his laptop and his chair, sitting back down as he continued to speak.

"We cry out to be recognized as the same, as equal, but yet special and unique each in our own way, and sometimes we spend so much time thinking of all the wrong that was done to us along the way that it becomes easy to let that wrong be done to someone else. For some of us we stand by and think, that happened to me and so it should happen to them. We miss the point that it was wrong when it happened to us and we struggle to find the strength to stop allowing the repetition those wrongs, to sometimes stop perpetrating them ourselves.

"We have to be better than that. I have to be better than that. Each of you out there in the dark has to be better than that. It was wrong when it happened to you, it will be wrong when it happens to someone else and only each of us deciding to make a change can stop it from happening again and again.

"We all must open our eyes and use our voices wisely when we speak. We must seek the truth ruthlessly, without compromise and we must decide for ourselves how we want this world to be."

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Eric was moving the food around on his plate lost in thoughts of what he had said tonight. When he read the newspapers or watched the news he saw so many things sliding at such an incredible rate he feared how far it might go before it stopped. He also feared what it would take to set it all right again. There as a Wrong there. He couldn't pinpoint it but he could feel it. The whole world outside was starting to conjure that same feeling in his gut that he got when he saw the werewolf that night.

"It's Warlow!" he blurted out suddenly, dropping his fork on the table and grabbing for Sookie's hand. She squeezed it gently looking at him. "This feeling I get from the things I see and read this Wrong, it is Warlow's influence on the world, isn't it? This is part of his long game?" He looked her, his eyes pleading with her to help him figure this out. "Tell me what you know about Warlow, Sookie."

"They didn't tell me much." She said, putting down her fork. "Their instruction to me was simple. Keep him away from you and keep you alive. I know that he came here in retaliation for the way his emissary was treated in Area 51, but he was coming here anyway. He had destroyed Fae with his armies and his wars. The Light Fae had left centuries before, escaping here, but by then the damage had been too great to save their realm. He was left with nothing but a fist full of dust for all his troubles."

"But why did he make war on the Light Fae, Sookie? What started all this in the first place? What made Warlow into a monster?" She smiled and squeezed his hand again.

"You have a master's degree in Communications, surely from all that you can deduce an answer without knowing the specific events?" He laughed bitterly.

"You and Older Eric expect me to stop the Dark Fae King with things I learned in school?" his tone was incredulous.

"As I recall part of your studies were psychology, political science and philosophy and how to use those tools to craft your words in such a way to have great impact. To do that, to get people to hear you, you had to learn how to reach them first on their level and then bring them to yours." There was a lot in that sentence, not the least of which was a clear indication that she had attended those classes with him. But of course she had. How could she protect him if she was hanging out back in his dorm as a cat? Hearing his thoughts she laughed.

"Yes, I did attend those classes with you, every day."

"I don't remember ever seeing you before that night with Lorena." His thumb caressed her hand and he felt himself calm a little as he tugged at this latest string of their past.

"Some days I was the girl a row back, head down doodling on her paper. Some days I was the boy in front who had a casual indifference to the class and the people around him. Sometimes I was literally the fly on the wall, but I was always there with you." Her soft intimate tone made his middle tighten.

"And the professors never noticed the stranger in their classes?"

"I glamoured them to not be able to see me. By the time you left Northwestern to head to UC I had complete run of the campus." He sat back absorbing that. His thoughts led him back to Warlow.

"But Warlow has done the same thing, moving between the raindrops never getting wet as he claimed his run of this entire world." She nodded.

"I have found him to be very goal oriented and focused in my dealings with him." His eyes grew round with surprise.

"What do you mean your dealings with him?"

"Over the years he has made several attempts on your life. If I were less prepared he would have been successful." She was so calm. Sometimes he still found that difficult to process and accept. She was so ' _Dinner at 6, and oh by the way I killed some Dark Fae today.'_

 _But that was before he changed his end game,_ she thought, and as had been happening since their second bonding Eric heard her thoughts. He pursed his lips and let out a breath, pulling his hand back from hers, crossing his arms over his chest. He already knew he wasn't going to like this, not even one little bit.

"This is hard, isn't it?" he asked her, trying to smile and failing utterly.

"Yes. You being able to hear my thoughts can be as dangerous as it is potentially beneficial. To get through this effectively there must be trust and respect."

"I don't mean to hear you, Sookie. I just can't help it sometimes. When I touch you especially." He paused, taking a drink of his wine and placing the glass carefully back on the table before looking at her again. "I promised you that this would be all right, that I would make it all right, remember?" She nodded. "So I need you to remember something, ok?" She nodded again looking into his eyes. "I need you to remember that this is my war. That I am supposed to be fighting it, that you are here to protect me, yes, but in order for me to be effective, you can't hide things from me." She hesitated and then nodded again. "I know you were alone for a long time, but you are not alone anymore. We can figure things out together now, and I need to know the things that you know. Promise me, Sookie. I need you to promise me that you will always tell me when something happens."

"I promise," she said.

"You thought that Warlow changed his end game. What does that mean?"

"He no longer just wants to kill you that is secondary now, though I am certain that he would still like to eliminate you very much."

"What is his primary goal now?"

"He wants me." Pushing up from the back of the chair he pinned her with his stormy gaze.

"Why?"

"I was unable to determine that from Lafayette's mind." Eric's vision went wobbly and he felt like someone had kicked him in the gut.

"Tell me. From the beginning." When she was done describing what had happened at the Sunshine Bar and Grille where they had the best burger in Tennessee, he was silent for a long time. Lafayette had been working for Warlow. She had left him there for Warlow because of his betrayal. All this time he had thought Lafayette was dead, had felt deep pangs of cutting guilt about it and he had been alive the last time Sookie had seen him. He had been alive when she left him there.

He had been working for Warlow.

She hadn't told him that.

She wouldn't have told him that except that in order to understand how she now knew that Warlow was after her he had to know of Lafayette's betrayal.

"Why didn't you kill Lafayette like you did the others?"

"I thought you wouldn't like it if I did." His hand came up to the back of his neck rubbing his skin as though he could wipe these terrible truths from his flesh and his mind. "Also, I thought that what Warlow would likely do to him for failing in his mission to capture you would likely be a far worse punishment than even death would be." Eric let out a mad little chuckle. He had asked for honesty. Now he had to be strong enough to take that honesty.

This was all part of her. This vicious protective killing machine that had let him wrap her aluminum foil armor and seek imaginary princesses. His brain couldn't reconcile the two different aspects of her into the woman who sat before him. That was bad, but what was worse was knowing that she was only what he had made her. He had made her this in a distant future, on the other side of war that he still couldn't stop but had to survive to win. He felt sick to his stomach when he realized that if there was a monster in this room it wasn't the woman across the table from him.

"I know this hard for you, Eric. I can feel it, and I can hear it," she said as gently as she could not moving though she wanted very badly to touch him in that moment. "But you have to move past the emotion and see the bigger picture. I have spent much time thinking on it these past months and I have arrived at a conclusion that I…" she trailed off.

"That you what?" he prompted.

"There are only two ways that Warlow can know about me. Either I was careless and he discovered me through watching you, or someone from 2065 betrayed me." Eric blinked. "I don't think I was careless enough for him to figure out that I was here, and even if I were he would only want to kill me, get me out of the way. He seems to actually want to capture me. This indicates that he values me, and the only reason he would value me"-

"Is if he knew what you were," Eric finished for her. Something like a thunderclap went off in his mind. Sookie had been right. He had been a good student. He had studied hard and learned many things about what motivates individuals to do the things they do. Sookie was a weapon unlike anything this world had ever seen. Of course a power mad Dark Fae King would want her, so he could dissect her and see how she worked. So he could make more of her. So he could make an army of warriors just like her.

Time splinters, Older Eric had told him. He was changed because Sookie was here, and so was Warlow. Learning everything he could about his adversary was now more important than ever.


	16. The Sound of Rain

We are blessed with the ability to hear sounds that put us at ease. The sound of a lover's voice in our ear, the pounding of the ocean surf, or even raindrops on tin roof. Eric had always loved that about the house where he grew up. The gentlest of rain, the hardest of tempests were made consoling by the thin layer of shiny metal that served as the roof for the old Northman farm house.

He had had a restless night after his intense conversation with Sookie. His dreams chased him through the tunnels of his mind, growling and snarling on the heels of his frightened thoughts. How could he beat Warlow? How could he survive if Warlow got Sookie? What could he do to protect her, or even to protect them all from Warlow's desire to destroy all the lives on the face on the earth?

It was almost five in the morning when the rain came down on his roof creating the soothing sounds that wound into his dreams and calmed him. Within moments of the first sounds penetrating his fitful sleeping he stopped struggling with the covers and slid into a deeper calm sleep. When he felt Sookie's warm body slide into the covers next to him his arms reached out automatically to pull her closer to him releasing any remaining tension as the touch of her always did.

Sleepy thoughts flowed through his mind. _If it could always rain…If I could always stay here…If she could always be in my arms like this I could face anything_ …

 _It's a feeling you store up and take with you_ , a dream voice answered him. That happened sometimes when he was sliding along the edge of deeper sleep. Questions his mind posed, wishes he half formed were answered by disembodied voices, which might have been his own subconscious, came back with answers. Eric didn't really believe that he was answering his own questions though, because what they said was sometimes more insightful, more meaningful than anything he himself could have conjured.

These strangers in his sleeping mind seemed wise, kind, patient and knowledgeable. Sometimes, they were confusing, too, offering only abstract incomplete thoughts that were more like poetry than answers. As frustrating as those abstractions were those were often the most useful. Those thoughts, partially unformed while completely informed offered a wide canvas for his hooked mind to paint on. They were nudges to his own inner truths that he had to work out for himself, and in doing so they became more meaningful and were more easily remembered in times of want or need.

When Sookie turned into his chest and wound her legs through his, placing one hand on his back and one on his neck the feeling of peace and hope sank deeper into his long relaxed bones. It was all still there, the war, Warlow, the Wrong, but she made it all seem so much more manageable with her touch and her warm sweet exhalations on his skin as she caressed him.

 _You need to move faster_ , the dream voice whispered to him as made way for her to take center stage in his mind.

"It's raining," he said softly as he pressed into her touch and curved himself around her small form beside him in the bed. His voice was deep with sleepy valleys and he felt her shiver in his arms, her desire to be closer to him telegraphing to his own skin which flooded with warmth. The feelings he got from her as he absorbed her affection and desire for him were a heady brew in his veins.

She made a small sound of affirmative in his neck and then her voice flooded his mind _. I love it when it's like this. The cloudy sky makes me feel like we are hidden and safe._ He stretched slowly, loving the feel of his muscles as they awoke for the day.

 _Like we are hidden from even God himself_ , he thought back to her and buried his face in her neck, taking deep breaths and feeling the slight dampness of her hair where a few drops has kissed her before she made it to the sanctuary of Eric's bed. She purred as he spoke to her mind to mind.

 _Why do you make everything all right?_ He thought to her as he slowly kissed and gently sucked the skin of her neck between his lips.

 _Same reason you make everything all right for me_ , she told him as she moved to return the kisses on his chest, her hands sliding down beneath the covers coming to rest on hips where she kneaded his flesh gently with her fingers. He moved over her without thinking, pinning her to the bed with his body. She opened her legs for him, offering him the perfect place to rest as he moved from her neck to her lips, her hands coming up his back to rest her open palms on his shoulder blades even as her small heels caressed the back of his calves with sensuous slowness.

His kiss was deep and slow, his tongue dancing with hers in a rhythm that seeped into their bodies that picked it up and rocked together creating the feeling of being on a small boat rather than a bed, rocking, rocking, as the rain came down on them. It was the height of decadence the way they moved and tasted each other in the dim early morning light completely open to each other.

Her small hands came around to scratch lightly across his nipples and continue down his chest in light patterns that drove him wild, spurring him to deepen their kiss and rock his growing erection against her center. She rocked back meeting him as he came into her, moaning at the heat of him teasing along her center. His hand came up to her hard nipples, his fingers tugging them gently, making them stand up for his touch.

He broke the kiss and moved his head down to take a long hot wet suckle of first one and then the other, making her pant his name as she writhed beneath him. Her sounds went straight to his cock and he could feel the moisture gathering at the tip, anticipating the moment when she would take him into her.

The gentle sound of thunder rolled to him from a distance and the rain began to pour heavier on the tin roof reinforcing the illusion of safety in the cocoon of covers and kisses. "Need you, Eric," her passion filled voice filled the room and his mind. "Need you so much right now," she said, hitching her legs higher on his hips, her hot center resting against his throbbing shaft. Her hand came down and grasped him, moving his tip to her entrance.

His answer to her unspoken question was to slide into her slowly, taking her body deeply and then stopping once he was buried inside her tight wet heat. A tremor of need ran through him as he held his body still and kissed her again, deep and slow, needing her to feel every bit of what he was feeling nestled inside her snug channel.

She moaned and let him feel her, too. The feeling of her body aching in slow waves that started between her legs where she was stretched tightly around him combined with the pounding of her heart as she anticipated the ecstasy of his impending movements. He groaned and pulled back from her grasping heat slowly.

She scratched his back and raised her legs, crossing them over his lower back to offer him deeper access to her body and to pull him back down into her. They both needed him to move. They both wanted him to just stay there inside her. It was an impossible desire to fulfill, but Eric did his best to try. He pulled back and then pressed as deeply as he could over and over in a slow rhythm that took her breath away.

Her quiet chants of approval filled his ears and his mind as he worked to satisfy all her needs and his own. Her fingers came up to thread through his hair, lightly scratching his scalp. The sensations made his back arch when he came down into her and she screamed as he touched her in this new way.

"Oh, do that again!" she said as she mussed his hair and clung to him, trying to get closer. He smiled a slow sexy smile and arched into her again, hitting that same delicious spot that he had just discovered. He kept the same slow pace working to hit that spot inside her when he pressed in and when he pulled back. She was bucking into him, now, saying his name over and over.

When he stopped moving in and out and pressed deep swiveling his hips she came in his arms screaming as the thunder rolled again outside. He held on tight and kept moving his hips in the same circular pattern to prolong her pleasure groaning as her slick muscles worked to pull him into her pleasure. He held on until her internal muscles clamped down hard on him demanding that he join her. His orgasm exploded from him making him call her name as he filled her again and again before he collapsed on top of her. After a moment he rolled them over, placing her on top of him, her legs around him, his arms around her as the rain on the tin roof lulled them both into sleep.

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The Tempus Key that Sookie had worn around her neck since the night he had called her back in a panic was pressed between their beating hearts. As they slept the Key wound itself into their dreams showing them one of the secrets it kept. A secret that could only be known if you had all the breadth of space and time at your disposal.

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She had searched for him for a very long time, her head full of stories that she had been told since her youth of his brave and fabulous exploits. She was the Princess of the Light Fae and her home land rested against the Dark Lands. Every day she took a walk along the edge of the Light and the Dark and dreamed that one day she would find him here. His honor and bravery made her feel excited at the prospect. As she walked today Eric and Sookie walked with her in their dreams.

They heard her thoughts and felt the anticipation of the idea that he might find her here. As she always did she thought of the long history of this man who filled her head and heart. In days of old the Dark Fae had been made slaves to the Light. The Light raided into the Dark lands and took them, bringing them back to serve and labor for the Light Fae. In the distance of time the woman who walked understood that the subjugation of an entire race had been wrong, but that had been so long ago, over three thousand years before she was even born!

One man had dared to stand up to the Light. Only one man had found the courage to raise his sword, and band his people together first to resist the slaving raids and then to cross to the Light and free those of his kind who had been trapped there for so very long. He had battled the Light to a truce and peace had reigned between them since.

There are no men like that today, she thought somewhat bitterly as she walked. There were definitely no honorable men like that in her world. She knew, just knew it in her heart that if she could meet this man he would see that she understood him, that she was made for him. In reality though, she knew she had been coming here for years and had never seen so much as a glimpse of anyone, let alone this mythical warrior of old.

Since the truce had been established between the Light and the Dark over a thousand years ago there had been almost no contact with the Dark Fae. They sent ambassadors to state functions but no one had seen the man she sought for a very long time. It had been rumored that perhaps he was dead even.

Sighing, she turned back away from the Dark and started for the castle in the distance. She had taken several steps when a voice called out from the Dark. "Lady?" She spun around her hands coming up to her chest.

The split of Dark and Light Fae was dramatic. It was a line that you could cross in a single step. One moment you were in the Light and the next you were in the Dark. Even this close to the line her vision could not pierce the inky blackness that lay before her. "Who's there?" she answered. She heard a man chuckle and then sounds of someone coming closer.

"A dreamer, lady." Her heartbeat sped up. Could it be? She took a step back toward the Dark.

"What do you dream?" she asked the voice in the night.

"Of a beautiful Lady of Light who walks my borders, perhaps seeking a dream of her own." She held her head high, having the feeling that this unseen man was teasing her. "Are you a dreamer, too, my lady?" She swallowed, her emotions spinning out of control first ruled by fear, and then by hope. She took a step closer.

"Mayhap, I am," she said.

"And what do you dream of, lady?" His tone was clearly teasing her now, and that made her angry. She stood tall and took another step determined to be true to herself and her heart's desire, even if it made her look the fool. _You are worth nothing if you lack the faith of your convictions_ , her father told her again in her head as he had since she was a tiny spark.

"Of a brave and noble Dark Knight who seeks a dream of his own," she said, her voice strong and unwavering. The steps came closer and in a moment the owner of the voice stepped out before her into the Light. He was magnificent! Long dark flowing hair the color of raven's wing, eyes such a dark brown they looked almost black. His face handsome and his tall warrior's body covered in armor the color of midnight. He had a large Fae sword strapped to his back, both of his hand empty and held relaxed at his sides. He smiled at her and her heart did a flip in her chest. One look into his warm eyes told her that this man was the man she had sought for so long. She closed the distance between them and then curtsied before him, bowing her head.

"I am Sookie, the Light Fae Princess," she told him. Then she raised her head and looked into his warm kind eyes waiting on what felt like the edge of blade to hear him say what her heart and had already sworn to be true. He bowed to her, a smile on his lips.

"Warlow, the Dark Fae King, at your service, Princess."


	17. This Small Peace

Jealousy and anger bolted through Eric's mind as she saw Sookie smile invitingly at another man. He growled inside and outside of the dream pulling her draped form closer to him in the bed. She responded without waking pressing closer to him. _That's not me, Eric,_ she thought to him. Confusion replaced his anger leaving him uncertain _. It's not me_ , she told him again, pressing her dream body closer to him as well, sighing when she felt him respond to her words in the dream. As always when she was close his head became clearer and he felt he could breathe again.

He leaned down in the dream and placed a kiss on the top of her head. _You said there was another Sookie,_ she reminded him covering his hands on her waist with his. _This must be her._ He looked at the other woman again and marveled at the similarity to his own Sookie.

 _Older Eric said you looked like her, fought like her. Yes, this must be Older Eric's Sookie,_ sent back to her.

 _Looks more like Warlow's Sookie to me_ , she thought raising an eyebrow as she watched the Dark and the Light circle each other. _I know that look,_ she told him. _It's how you look at me sometimes. What does it mean when you do that?_

 _It's the reflection of your fire in my soul,_ he told her, kissing her head again as she purred at his words. She let her eyes float shut a moment only to open them to a new scene. Now they were in large Dark palace, Sookie and Warlow sitting in front of a roaring fire their hands entwined as they spoke in low tones.

"We lost our parents to the Light raiders when my brother Daletheon was small. I was all the family he had left in this world. I was older, nearly fifty when it happened, so I raised him as my own."

"Fifty?" Sookie said, her tone wondrous. "You were but a babe yourself, Warlow." He smiled at her and raised her hand to his lips.

"I was full grown and able to manage well enough. He became my whole world. His pain over the loss of our parents was a wound that would not heal. A wound that we saw on the faces of all Dark Fae who had lost a loved one in the raids. Family is everything to the Dark as it is to the Light. Surely, you understand this Princess?"

"I do," she assured him. He sighed raised a hand to her face.

"It was because of Daletheon that I picked up a sword for the first time. I promised him I would reunite our family, all the families that had been torn apart by the Light raiders." She moved closer to him in front of the fire.

"And you did!" she said, her hand coming up to his face. "You saved them all, my darling." He studied her face for a moment and then cocked his head to the side.

"I want you to meet my brother, Princess." Her eyes grew round in surprise as her smile widened and she nodded.

"I would like that very much!" Eric could feel her with his gift of empathy and understood immediately that Warlow's words warmed her to the core. She felt not only his great affection for her but his trust of her in the offer to know his kin. Sookie felt it as well as she searched the blood tie between herself and Eric, but could only imagine its true meaning. She had never had a sibling to care for, the closest thing to family she ever had was in Eric. The warm emotions flowing over her made her press closer to him again.

She turned her head to see a finely made Fae come into the room. His resemblance to Warlow removed any doubt as to his identity. She and Eric watched silently as introductions were made. Everyone was surprised when Sookie embraced Daletheon holding him close as tears came down her face. "It's so nice to meet you, brother," she said to him causing both men to smile at her exuberance. "Warlow has told me so much about you!" she said cupping his face between her hands as she peered into his eyes.

"And I have heard much about you as well, Lady." She flushed and dipped her head.

"Oh, my. Do I want to know?" she asked laughing softly.

"Yes, because it was only the best things. Knowing you has made my brother a new man, Princess. You have made him truly happy for the first time in a very long time." She blushed deeper. "He loves you very much," Daletheon finished. She glanced at Warlow, her head still down. "You were right, brother, she is even lovelier when she blushes." She swatted Daletheon on the arm playfully and turned into Warlow's waiting arms hiding her face in his chest. He kissed her head as Eric had just done with his Sookie and smiled warmly at his brother as he held her close.

"She truly is," he said before he picked her up and swung her around her feet leaving the ground. She squealed in delight and spontaneously leaned up to give his lips a quick peck as soon as her feet were back on the ground. He pulled her back and kissed her deeply, his hand tangling in her long blond hair.

 _I understand what a kiss like that means, Eric thought to Sookie._

 _Yes_ , she answered and they watched as the scene changed again. Now Sookie and Warlow were wrapped in dark velvet covers, limbs tangled together in post coital bliss. Warlow's fingers were playing with a strand of her hair as she reclined on his bare chest.

"It could work out for us in the end," he said quietly to her. She turned her head up to look at him, her cheek still resting on his chest. "There are more rumors of war with the Demons every day. If they do make a play for Fae, opening the portals to claim our lands then only a union of the Fae both Light and Dark will be able to save us." He paused a moment, letting her hair fall.

"As horrible as war is it will give us chance to show your father the man I am and gain his acceptance of our union." She looked very sad and Eric could feel her fear clearly.

"I am not sure that Niall would ever accept our love, Warlow. He clings to the old ways of his fathers before him. His thoughts are…in the past."

Sookie jumped in Eric's arms. _Niall? Could it be the same one who trained me?_ Eric didn't respond, there was no way to know.

"Then we will change his mind!" Warlow said passionately, sliding down in the bed to face her. "We will make him see that the Dark has a right to be free and that we are not lesser Fae than those of the Light!" He looked at her intently, his face showing the full radiance of the love he felt for the woman before him. "He will see the man I am when he looks me in the eye and sees that my heart is full of only you, my love." Eric felt the Princess' fear recede but noted that it did not completely disappear. She was afraid of her father and not at all sure that he would be convinced by the love she had for the Dark Fae King.

"I want to teach you to fight, my love, so that if the war we fear does come I will know that you can take care of yourself." She smiled again.

"Niall has already trained me well," she assured him, but he would not be put off.

"There is always more to learn, and I would know that you have everything you need to meet me on the other side. I want to know that I am fighting for our future together when I stand on the field of battle. Will you give me this small peace, Princess?" His plea was so plaintive there was no way she could deny him. She nodded and kissed him with all the love she felt for him.

The scene changed again, this time there were outside in Dark Fae, the sounds of metal on metal clanging through the Dark woods. Eric and Sookie turned as one toward the sound and beheld two warriors battling. "You must move faster, Princess! Stop thinking about the moves you are going to make and give your body over to them!" She pressed harder toward him, her hands moving at a blur as she fought him with a sword in each hand.

 _Those are my swords,_ Sookie thought to Eric. He picked up on her desire to hold them and held her tighter to her him to soothe her.

"Let your hands be swift as Vengeance and Death when you come at me!" Warlow called to her, holding his ground as she pressed for an advantage. "Know your limits and then exceed them! Use all your gifts to crush your opponent!"

She screamed her frustration and rage just as she turned, releasing one of the swords into the air. They watched it travel up for a moment and then were pulled back to Sookie and Warlow in time to see a blinding flash of light leave her empty hand and hit Warlow dead center in the chest, knocking his large frame to the ground. She caught the sword as it came back down and stepped forward in one fluid motion placing the blade at his neck for the killing blow. Warlow looked at her a moment before a slow smile spread across his face. She was panting, her hair damp with sweat hung around her face which was fierce with triumph to have bested him.

"I love you more than anything, woman," he told her. A shudder racked her body a moment before she dropped her blades to ground and fell into his arms still panting from her exertions. She clung to him sobbing softly while he soothed her and whispered of his pride in her ear.

"You are ready now for anything, my Princess."

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Eric and Sookie both awakened with a jerk. She was still resting atop his large frame and from the dim light in the room and the soft sounds of rain on the roof they had not slept for very long. She blinked and looked at him rising to meet his eyes. The Tempus Key around her neck swung forward catching the dim light and reflecting it sharply. Both of them looked at it intently a moment their gazes fearful and curious as it swung gently between them.

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After a shower they sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee each lost in their own thoughts. Eric broke the silence first. "Was that just a dream?" She set her cup down her brow furrowed.

"It felt real." He nodded.

"But there is nothing in the information that Older Eric provided about this history of his Sookie and Warlow." She shrugged.

"Maybe he didn't know, or he thought that it was of no value." Eric sat back, exhaling loudly.

"That is helluva thing to leave out!"

"Maybe she never told him. How long ago do you think all that happened?" Eric did some quick math in his head thinking out loud.

"I know that Warlow waged a war against the Light Fae for hundreds of years before they came this world. Obviously, there was more to story if this was not just a dream so, maybe like a thousand years ago?"

"And if the dream was right he was three thousand when she met him. By then he had won a civil war with the Light for the freedom of the Dark and faded into legend. So, guessing he would be over four thousand years old when they met. It is hard to say how long they were together before he turned on the Light and banished them from Fae." Eric was silent for a moment and then he started to giggle. Sookie looked at him not sure what was funny and then she felt his hysteria blow through her from their blood tie.

"Five thousand years old," he started laughing harder, unable to control himself as the terror and absurdity of the situation before him became clearer. "I am up against a five thousand year old Dark Fae who is hell bent on destroying my entire world and all I have to hide behind is degree in Communications." He left loose then guffawing as he bent over clutching his sides, tears forming at the corner of his eyes.

Sookie let him go, he needed to get past the hysteria and feelings of hopelessness before he could focus on whatever came next. Eventually he calmed, leaving on the occasional giggle to escape him as he tried to sip his coffee and compose himself.

"What else do you know?" she asked him, working hard to get him centered and back on track. Suddenly he was completely serious and she felt the fear he had been fighting since they had awakened overcome with a deep banging ache of pain. Another tear slipped from the corner of his eye as he looked at her.

"I believe from what we saw that he truly loved her, more than anything, because I could feel it." He paused, swiping his face and sniffing. "I believe that he needed her to be able to protect herself because he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. I guess he didn't teach her well enough because…" he stopped and his attempt at a grin turned into a grimace. "In the end, he was the one who killed her."


	18. I Don't Belong

**_2065_**

Eric rose to greet his old friend when he swept into his office. His guest's hair was windblown and there were droplets of moisture on his pale beautiful face. When he clasped his hand in welcome the chill of his skin made Eric shiver. "Godric," he greeted him warmly pulling the smaller man into his arms embracing him tightly. He had seen the vampire only once since the last battle with Warlow. The battle where he lost Sookie to Warlow's sword.

It had been Godric that pulled him up from the mud, his hands and face covered in blood. It was Godric who stayed with him and kept him from seeking an end to the lonely life he now faced without her at his side. It was Godric who had listened to his screams of rage and pain over how unfair it was to have won the battle and still have lost the only thing that mattered to him.

Eric knew he would not have survived without his friend. Godric had known Sookie for a great many years before Eric, having met her soon after she and her kin immigrated to this world from Fae. After the screaming was over they had reminisced about the beautiful Princess that had brought them together in the battle for this world and helped to lay the foundation for their friendship.

They talked about how her hair looked in the candlelight of the many evenings they had shared together before the fire sharing stories and laughing together. They remembered how funny she had been, how whimsical her sense of humor was and how she just made them feel better by being in the room with them.

It was because of the bond they shared that he had called Godric here tonight to ask him to do what he himself could not do, could not have brought himself to do even if he were able. His heart still belonged to a woman who haunted his dreams. He had nothing to offer one who wore her face, but she needed. 500K13 needed many things to be ready for what faced her and while many of them were beyond his power he would do anything to see that she got them, no matter the price.

He motioned for Godric to take a seat and then let himself fall heavy into his chair before taking another drink of the scotch he had poured just before Godric's arrival. "How is she, our little hjärta?" Eric smiled and titled the glass in his hand.

"She is well, better than we ever dreamed, in fact. She has learned much from her teachers. She has mastered her shifting under the tutelage of Luna, and of her Were bear from Anika Quinn the Tiger."

"She is John Quinn's daughter?" Godric asked. Eric nodded. The Tiger had been their ally in the war, falling early in battle. Eric had taken Anika in to raise her when she lost her father. He and Sookie being surrogate parents for her in his absence.

"Diantha has taught her to master her Demon gifts as well. Hell, even Niall has chipped in teaching her. He gave her Sookie's swords when she completed her training with him." Godric raised an eyebrow in surprise.

"That is a surprise. Does she know who he is?"

"That he was Sookie's father?" Godric nodded, "No, we have kept the knowledge of Sookie from her through the use of Niall's magics, otherwise she would have picked it from our minds like flowers in the spring."

"And he gave her Vengeance and Death?"

"I couldn't believe it either. It seems right though, doesn't it?" Godric thought a moment.

"Yes," he said finally, "It does seem right. She would have wanted them to pass to a worthy owner and if Niall himself gave them to her then there is no doubt of her prowess."

"There are no words for her prowess. She is so much like-"he stopped, choking on a sob that he refused to let pass his lips. He took another deep drink of scotch and tried to drown it in his throat. He almost succeeded. "I am sure your contribution of vampire genes to her DNA has a lot to do with the magnificent creature that she is." Finishing the drink he set the glass gently on the table and then looked at Godric. "It's time for you to teach her to be a vampire now."

Godric waited for more. He expected Eric to tell him what he expected in more detail. When Eric spoke no further he realized that he was leaving the decisions of how and what to teach her to Godric. He inclined his head.

"I will not disappoint you," he said as he rose. Eric smiled at him, it almost reached his haunted eyes.

"You never have, old friend."

When the door closed behind Godric Eric poured himself another drink and sat back in his chair chasing his memories around and around his mind.

32XXXXXXXXXXXXXX23

Godric was shocked to his core when he first beheld the fully grown 500K13. If he were younger he might have lost himself and called her by a name that was not hers. He was grateful for the magics that Niall had given him that hid all his thoughts of his long lost friend.

He had last seen her when she was an infant and though Eric insisted on calling her by her designation of 500K13 that had felt too cold for him, so he had taken to calling her Hjärta, less for who she was and more for who she would be.

Now faced with the reality of her he felt himself needing the same distance that he had silently condemned Eric for needing. He could not let himself forget who she was and not who he wanted her to be.

She had stood when he entered the room, clearly anticipating his visit. "You knew I was coming?"

"I felt you. I heard you." She tilted her head like Sookie used to do when she was thinking. His heart clenched in his chest.

"You know why I am here then?"

"You are here to teach me how to feed and not kill."

"Yes." He should have stopped there. He knew that. He went on though following his heart and not his head. "But before we begin I would like to know you better." She tilted her head again.

"How do we do that?"

"I have been told that you have completed your sword training." She nodded. "Show me," he said smiling at her, his fangs on display.

32XXXXXXXXXXXX23

 _I don't belong here._

It had become his mantra over the past week he had spent with her. At first, the resemblance had put him on the edge of pleasure and pain. Those emotions had exploded through his ancient veins when they first entered the fighting arena and he had seen her summon her swords from the Nether.

"To me!" she had bellowed, echoes fading through the room and pounding his memories with all the times he had seen another version of her perform the summoning. When they engaged the dance too was familiar, owed no doubt to the fact that Niall had trained Sookie as well. They had sparred on many occasions through the years, it had been one of their favorite things to do together.

By the end of the first night he knew with absolute clarity that this was not his Fae Princess. He also knew that because while he had adored Sookie and considered her his best friend, this woman, this child of his blood and bone touched his heart in a way that Sookie never had.

His little Hjärta was different. Not better, just different. At first he told himself it was the natural affection that any maker would feel for a child, because in a way she was that to him. She had not been made in the traditional vampire fashion, and she was more than any vampire child had ever been but she had been called true when he named her Hjärta, for in the space of a few nights she had become his heart.

He kept this from her, putting all his energy into keeping the cold mask in place, not daring to show her how she grew in him with each mock battle, each conversation, and each interaction.

 _I don't belong here._

It was what he told himself when he felt himself slipping. In his mind he knew that keeping her separate from that kind of interaction was part of what was needed to keep her focused on the journey she would soon undertake. If he confused her, if he told her he loved her and if he were as lucky as to find out that she felt the same for him what then?

 _I don't belong here._

She belonged to man who lived three doors down the hall. She belonged to a man who had not been born yet. She could never be his.

At the end of the week he brought in donors, offering her a first taste at the vein of what blood could be like, would be like when she was out in the past away from this facility. He followed her emotions and feelings with the bond they shared. He pulled her back when she started to go too far. He calmed her when she became too excited and aroused not understanding the feelings and desires that rocked her as she experienced them for the first time.

It was in that moment that he realized the full weight of what he had to do, what he wanted to do. What he would have done if she were truly vampire made on the night she rose. He would have shown her what to do with all the feelings that were coursing through her and how she could use them to make taking the blood pleasurable for her and her partner.

He tried to rationalize all the reasons why he shouldn't, couldn't truly be a maker to her and then one by one shot them down. She needed this. She needed to understand. She needed to know so that when she was alone she would not be afraid of herself or of her desires.

He would have given anything not to be the one who had to do this. He would have given anything to be the one who had to do this.

All of this he kept from her, never showing her, never letting her know what she did to him or how she made him feel.

The first time he touched her, she jumped. His heart cracked as he realized that she had never been touched like this before. He hated Eric in that moment, the whole time knowing that nothing could change what had happened or what was to happen yet.

This moment was all he had. This was he was to be given in this life. He would make it count.

His fingers caressed her face as she panted before him, the donor had just left the room and they were alone. "There is more to learn," he told her softly. "That feeling you have inside you, trust it. Do what it tells you to do. You are safe with me. You can't hurt me," he told her feeling the weight of his lie in the face of his pain. She looked at him and then her arms came around his neck her lips crashing into his. He moaned as he opened to her, letting her rub her warm body against him as she sought to feed the ache in her.

"Feeding can be a great pleasure for you and well as the donor you choose," he whispered when she released his lips. His hands came up to cup her breasts. She growled and tore at his clothes lost in her need for something she could not name.

Godric named it for her. Passion, he thought. Love, he thought. My Hjärta, he thought as she pulled him to the floor instinctively placing her body under his and pulling him closer. He took her for the first time as gently as he could but she gave little quarter despite the pain he saw on her face when he entered her. She was not a stranger to pain, and after a few moments the blood called to her, pushed her to roll him over beneath her. He rose from the floor and sat up pulling her face to his neck as she rode him furiously. When her fangs sunk into his neck he moaned as she came around him buried deep inside her.

It was all he could do to not bite her. He knew though that no matter what his heart wanted he could not form a bond with her. It would be unfair and it would make things harder when she left him.

Later, he held her to his chest and explained that Eric wanted her to know how blood ties work, that they were a psychic connection between the vampire and their human, or between two vampires. He explained that if they exchanged blood three times their bond would be unbreakable.

"Why didn't Eric tell me this himself?" she had asked quietly from his arms.

"He called me here to teach you, so in a way he did." She was quiet for a while.

"Eric wanted me to learn everything so I could be strong." Godric's heart ached. What she was true, he now believed that Eric had wanted Godric to teach her this and he blessed and cursed him in his heart. Had he known that this would happen? Probably. Godric had never hidden his nature from Eric. His friend understood the way of things. Eric had known when he called him here to teach her that this would happen between them.

For the sake of his friendship he chose to believe that Eric couldn't have known that this woman would steal his heart in just a hand full of nights. No one would ever know.

"Thank you, Godric for helping me." She stood then, leaving him in pieces on the floor. She dressed quietly and left. Godric lay there for a long time, not moving as he ran in his mind fast and far away from this impossible love he had found.

32XXXXXXXXXXXXXX23

He saw her once more two nights before she left he slipped into her quarters and awakened her. He took her hand and kissed it softly before he spoke.

"I am a very old vampire. Where you are going, I will be there. I won't know you, but I am certain that if you need a friend I can be that for you in the past as I have been here. In the 1980's I was in Brazil living under the name Estaban Mendez. In the 90's I moved to Calgary and became Richard Sovegny. In the new century I was in America, Texas where I was Sheriff of Area Nine in Dallas. I was there until the war started in earnest with Warlow. Promise me that you will call upon me if you have need?"

"How will I convince you to trust me?" He smiled in the dark. Her question was so typical of her. It was succinct and practical like the woman herself. However she came to be, whatever her reason for being was beyond her job or her known destiny her perfection in his eyes reassured him for the first time in centuries that there was indeed a God.

"When I was made into vampire I was taken from my home in the middle of the night. I saw my wife and children murdered before my eyes and for a long time I was a monster. I called myself Death and meted that out to every stranger who crossed my path. I teased them cruelly and murdered them viciously as if that would make up for all the things I had lost in my turning. I think I thought it would change things somehow if I could make the rest of the world run red with the pain that coursed through my veins. I was young and foolish then."

"And you aren't now?" she asked.

"I am less so." She clasped his hand in acceptance of a past that could not be changed, recognizing it from the future she faced that could not be changed either. "I finally remembered under the pain what it was to love and for the first time in centuries I could see my wife's face and remember her name. It was Amalita. If you have to find me, if you need me, tell me her name and I will know that I sent you. I will believe you because there is no other who knows her name that still walks this earth, not in this time or in the one you are going to."

She leaned forward and kissed his check softly. He made himself sit still. He made himself not turn his head to meet her lips with his. "I'll remember," she breathed her promise against his cool skin.

32XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX23

 ** _Present Day_**

Eric and Sookie had retired to the sofa after they finished their coffee. She was snuggled around him, her hand open on his chest above his heart. He covered it with his. He had searched the information in his mind and found nothing about the history of the Princess and Warlow.

"We need to find out more," he said as much to himself as to her. "We need to know how that man turned into the one we are faced with here today." She hesitated and then turned her face up to his.

"There may be someone we can ask." He looked down at her.

"Who?"

"In the future I knew a vampire who is alive now, has been alive for many centuries. I know that he was connected to Older Eric and the Princess, but I am not sure how or what he might know. He told me how to find him here if I needed him." Eric sensed her anxiety through their bonds. There was something she was not telling him, something that she was uncomfortable about.

"What is this vampire to you, Sookie?"

"He was my friend. At least I think he was. I knew him only briefly in the future. He was the vampire who taught me how to feed and care for myself when I was sent back here."

"And he told you how to contact him? Why? He won't know you."

"He told me how I could convince him that I was a friend if I needed to contact him." Remembering their conversation about pleasurable feeding Eric was flooded with possessiveness and jealousy.

"You were intimate with him then?"

"Yes."

"And you want to go to him for help?"

"I think we can if we need to." In all his life Eric had never felt like this before. He hated it, this feeling of fear and pain that he could lose her, that she might want another. He had been in relationships before and had never been provoked to this cave man response. It was frustrating to feel this uncertainty over something that he wanted so strongly.

"It wasn't like it is with you, Eric," she assured him, homing in on his distress. "It was never like this with anyone but you. I didn't feel that way for him and he didn't feel that for me. He was there to teach me what I needed to know and to help me. It was nothing more."

"Were there others who helped you?" She told him of Diantha, Luna, Annika and Niall, all of whom had taught her what she needed to know to master her gifts. "Older Eric made sure that I had the best teachers."

"Did he know about _everything_ that Godric taught you?" He hated the tone of his voice when he asked this question. He hated having to ask it because he knew that he was asking once again what kind of man he turned out to be. She hugged him tighter.

"We never discussed it."

"Of course not," he said fearing that told him all he needed to know. She sighed.

"Eric, there are things that have happened to us, and things we have done before we came together. They are the events that molded us and made us who we are now. I can't change them, and I wouldn't change them because if we did then we wouldn't be here right now. There is nowhere else I want to be, and so I must accept each thing that led me here and try and find ways to be grateful, even for the bad things. You must as well."

 _You must move faster_ , his dream voice had told him this morning. He needed information to arm himself. Could he wait for another way to present itself? Maybe if they went to sleep they would dream together about the things that happened next?

He pulled her closer to him. "Let's sleep on it and see if we can come up with a better idea?" She cuddled him closer and placed her leg between his. The sounds of the rain on the roof lulled her to sleep in minutes. He was awake for a while wondering if every man in the world wanted this woman in his arms and how he would ever measure up to Dark Fae Kings and ancient vampires to keep her heart.


	19. The Talisman

"I want you to teach me how to fight," he said to her that night over dinner. "I want to be ready to beat them if I need to, protect you if I need to."

"Them?" she asked raising an eyebrow at him.

"Fae, Vampires, Shifters, whatever monster is out there coming for us." She hesitated, looking at him as though she could see through him into his heart.

"I have promised that I will share my thoughts and my actions with you, and you have been brave enough to try and accept them."

"Yes, you have, Sookie."

"You are already a warrior, Eric. Your weapons are of a different nature. Your empathy, your viewpoints, your beliefs are key to being able to do what you need to do, more than any sword could ever be."

"How so?"

"They hear you because you speak. They listen because you are one of them."

"Am I?"

"Yes. Mostly."

"Yes, I have heard that I am 'mostly human' before, but I have no idea what that means."

"When I was with Older Eric he knew what you have not realized and fully accepted. You are more than human."

"Meaning that somewhere in my family woodpile I have a supernatural ancestor?" She nodded. "What was it?" She shook her head.

"You think in terms of 'monsters' and 'others' and 'it' while you struggle to grasp that we all have the most important thing in common. Something that binds us all together irrevocably."

"And that would be what?"

"We all bleed. We all die."

The surgical precision of her words cut him, but she wasn't done. "I was made from the best of us all in a time when the need was great. I was trained by a group of supernaturals who wanted nothing to do with each other until you brought them together for a common cause. You showed them a greater concern that could destroy everything they knew. It made centuries of blood feuds and pettiness show themselves clearly for what they were. You did that for humans and supernaturals. You did the impossible!" she said fiercely, leaning closer to him to press the importance of her words on him. Her passion took his breath away. "From that act of bravery and selflessness I was born.

"Still, in this place and in this time, I am an abomination to them all. You must understand, Eric. Warlow may covet me for his own ends but if the supernatural populace at large discovered what I am they would hunt me to the ends of the Earth. She paused, taking a breath to calm herself.

"Those little souls, those flickering little lights out there in the dark huddled around their computers and their televisions waiting for a voice to rise up and tell each of them, the supernatural and the humans _alike_ , that they are _seen_ , they _accepted_ , they are _necessary_ and above all else that they are _loved_ , they need you to be the man you are. They need your compassion and your warmth. They need you to reach in and offer them a chance to rise up and be all that their dreams tell them they can be."

"And what of you, Sookie? Don't _you_ need me at all?"

"Yes, but the needs of the many…" he smiled and blinked the moisture from his eyes.

"Spock? You're quoting Spock to me?" She shrugged.

"Truth comes to us in many forms."

"Yes it does," he agreed looking deeply into her eyes. "And this is mine. I need _you_. I need to keep you safe. It is imperative that I do. Because you _remind_ me to love. I spoke to them before I knew you and maybe I was doing something then, too, but I didn't _feel_ it like I do now that I have you by my side. Now, I look at you and I see every one of _them_. I _feel_ every one of them and my words have _weight_. My words have _resonance_ that even I can hear.

"You, my love for you gives me resonance. I know I have a lot to figure out. I'm still getting some of it wrong. But any chance I have of getting it right is tied up in my heart more than my brain and my heart belongs to you. When I think of what you have been through, what you have done to be here with me right now in this moment I know that you are not only the best of them, you are the best of me as well."

She could feel how much he believed that as he spoke the words. She thought of all the ways she had seen this man be since she had stepped into his life in that diner in Shreveport and the growth and change humbled her. That he gave her credit for his changes, his strengths was not something she could sit silently on.

"The distance you have traveled is your own journey, Eric. That I have been with you is a gift to me and nothing more. I am only here to protect you, and the fact that you let me love you is more than I had ever hoped for since this started." She rose then, moving toward him with a lithe grace that made his throat constrict at its beauty. "To touch you," she said quietly, her hand coming up to his face and lighting there gently. "To kiss you," she her lips gave his cheek a feather light caress. "To turn to you when I need, when I want to feel you with my body, with my entire being, these are gifts to me and I accept them, humbled that you can find it in your heart to see me and welcome me into your embrace making me feel at home for the first time I can ever recall."

She was standing so close to him, still leaning down so that her words went right into his ear and traveled around his body making his heart pound and swell. She had owned him in her few sentences, her few ragged gestures that accompanied them. He wanted to let the tide of her take him away to a place where he could show her in action how she touched him with her every deed, but he needed her to understand. Taking a deep breath he pulled her closer, his large hands so gentle on her body, so intense in their need to touch her that it telegraphed through her as it had him.

"But that's just it," he said into her ear, kissing her face as she had his. "In _you_ is a bit of _them_ all, You teach me every day the best of what _they_ can be. I think I must be saying it poorly and for that I am so, so sorry, Sookie, but I am doing my best." He paused, taking several more deep breaths before he tried again. "You stand before me and to me you are them, and you are mine. In you they are mine. You will teach my foolish heart to love them all…as it loves you."

She was lost when he claimed her. _Mine_ , she thought, the word echoing through her, calling her vampire nature to the surface, the need to possess ingrained in her primal nature. "Say that again," she begged him.

"What?" She moved around to his lap, straddling his long legs and moving her body closer to him pressing her chest to his.

"Mine. Say it again." His arms went around her pulling her closer, absorbing her warmth and feeling that her whole body was covered in shivers evoked by that single word.

"Sookie. You…are…mine." She growled in his neck, her fangs coming down as she reveled in that claiming. She didn't understand why or what was happening and couldn't have explained if he had asked her to. Thankfully, he did not. There was no need for her answer to him caused the same reaction in him, as if he too had the same primal force in his soul that she did in hers.

"And you are mine," she said before she kissed him to seal her claim. He picked her up, her legs wrapped around his waist, his hands under his hips holding her close as she kissed him breathless. They made it as far as the sofa, but could go no further. They stayed there for hours, Sookie finally climbing to the top of Mount Eric as she had once in a dream, screaming her victory in a single word as she staked her claim at the top of this soft hard body that was filled only with thoughts of her.

"Mine."

32XXXXXXXXXX23

It was the first birds singing at dawn that brought them up from their dreamless sleep and into the world where they were tangled together in body as much in heart and soul. She moved to the side reaching down to the floor. He reached for her, growling softly to impress upon her how much he did not like this idea. She fell back next to him her jeans in one hand while the other burrowed in one of the front pockets.

"Got it," she mumbled throwing the jeans back down on the floor and turning toward him. "Morning," she told him, blinking sleep away. He gave her a lazy smile in return that made her heart speed up. It was so wrong that a single smile could have so much power over her, but he could do that with his expressive face. When he puckered his lips out for a kiss, it was good as a command that she could not ignore. Keeping her hand closed over what she had pulled from her pocket she slid up his body, using his shoulders to pull her up until her lips met his.

Growling his approval in sleepy tones he raised her to rest on top of him again, loving the feel of her covering him as her lips worked their sweet magic. Reading his mind, she shifted, parting her legs for him, loving the feel of him ready and wanting her again despite the endless night of pleasures they had just shared. She rocked against him once, and then ended the kiss with a dozen small pecks on his lips.

She leaned back on his chest and looked into his eyes, a serious expression on her face. "I have a gift for you." He blinked now, becoming more alert as well. Surprise was clear on his face.

"A gift?" She nodded, biting her lip.

"I had heard you thinking about what you asked me last night, about wanting to learn to fight." He tensed beneath her. He had known they would come back to this eventually. His desire to protect her and her insistence that his power was in his heart and mind rather than his muscles. She had given him much to think about, but there had been no time to think yet. His every waking moment since their conversation had been spent on glorious demonstrations of the love her felt for her in his heart.

"I know that you have not made your final decision yet, and that you need time to think over what we have said on the subject." He relaxed again, loving that she understood him so well. "Hearing your thoughts caused some of my own." She looked down then a moment and then forced her eyes back up. "If I should fall you would be left without protection. This is a thought that plagues me deeply. I cannot bear to imagine you this way." She stopped again, taking a deep breath as she pushed the images in her mind away. He started to speak but she cut him off, pressing on quickly. "I made this for you."

She opened her palm to reveal a simple gold band. "What's this?" he asked raising a brow at her.

"It was your father's. I found it when we first came here. I had not realized until I saw it that he had not been wearing it when they had the accident." Eric's face flashed with the old pain that still lived in him from their loss.

"He used to take it off when he was working in yard or tinkering in the barn."

"Yes. I guess he had been doing something before they left that day and had simply forgotten to put it back on when they left." It was the kind of detail that Eric would have missed in his grief as the arrangements were made for his parent's remains. Before he could slide too far down into that old wound she pulled his attention back.

"This ring meant the world to him. I heard him tell your mother once that it was a symbol of everything he felt for her and everything in him that was good because she had been a part of his life. It was already filled with the magic of true love, which is the greatest magic of all." He looked from the ring to her face again. "The words you said to me last night, the love we shared in their wake tell me that I have chosen wisely in making this your talisman." She took his hand then, much like his father's she thought for the first time and slipped it onto the ring finger of his left hand. The fit was perfect.

"If I should fall, if I can stand beside you no more then let this small token of loves past and present serve in my stead." He looked closely at it, blinking to clear the moisture from his eyes that her words had conjured. Something about it was different than he remembered. There was an etching along the band, some kind of symbols or words in a language he did not understand. "This ring is steeped in love and spelled with the greatest magics I have at my disposal." She threaded her fingers through his, her thumb tracing the band.

"Remember outside the Sunshine Barr and Grille when the Dark Fae came and I told you to be still?" He nodded, eyes wide and a frown on his face as he tried to see where this was going. "I used a gift I had then to protect us. It is Fae gift to not be seen if one wills it to be so. When it was in me it only worked when I was still. When I moved or anything moved that I was sheltering within its cover the spell was broken."

"When it was _in_ you?" Hurrying on and ignoring his tone she continued. "I combined the Fae gift with Demon magic and placed it in this ring for you. If you are wearing this ring and will it to be so then you can move freely and not be seen by any supernatural being that is a part of my DNA. You can be heard and you can be scented but not seen. It is a small magic but one that might serve you well if I am unable to protect you."

 ** _Take it back!_**

That was his first thought, it barreled through his brain with such force that she flinched as she heard it. His mind raced through what it would mean that she had taken this gift from herself and given it to him. It made her vulnerable! It was too much! His second thought was less of a knee jerk reaction and more of an emotional response to her sacrifice.

 _Oh, my love, thank you._

She heard that, too and a hesitant smile lifted the corners of her mouth. He worked hard to control his fear of her being in danger from this sacrifice and tried to see it for what it was, a way to reassure herself that he would be safe if she could not protect him. The very thought of her not being there with him was overwhelming, it gave the fear power and pushed him to reject her thoughtful gift. For long moments his lips remained silent and closed as he turned this over in his mind. Finally, he chose a path that neither of them expected.

"Well, as far as proposals go, this one takes the cake." He smiled at her, "Yes. I will marry you, Sookie." To his everlasting amazement she blushed! Her reaction pushed all the negative thoughts from his mind with a delight he could not recall since childhood. Moving quickly he flipped them over on the sofa pinning her beneath him. Of course he knew he could not keep her there if she truly wanted to go, but her words, her gestures told him that she never wanted to leave him. Another rush of delight and joy infused his entire being.

"Well…I…uh…,"she stammered trying to get her bearings in the naked light of what her gift to him represented.

"Uh?" he teased her, peppering her face in tiny rapid kisses as she had done to him moments before. "Uh, what?" He slid down and rested his chin between her breasts, his smile wide, eyes dancing with delight at her reaction to his words. She stopped squirming and met his gaze evenly, her usual composure sliding into place. Testing how well it was seated he puffed his lips out again at her and make some loud kissing sounds. The mask crumbled and she melted into laughter beneath him causing his head to bob gently on her chest with her movements.

"I guess I didn't think about it that way, but…maybe part of me knew the significance of the talisman I chose." Her hand threaded through his hair, sweeping it back off his forehead gently sending chills through him again. His body responded returning to its need to feel her around him in another intimate embrace like the ones they had shared through the night. Instinctively, he ground his hips against the sofa beneath him, preparing to slide back into the welcoming juncture of her thighs. He froze when she spoke.

"We are almost fully bonded." His mind and body caught fire at her words, remembering how he had bitten her the first time they had made love. Nothing in his life had compared to the ecstasy of her blood while he moved inside her. Instantly, he was rock hard wanting that again.

The manifestation if his telepathy with her that resulted from that union and learning to deal with it had been a road block to them allowing that to happen again. Neither knew what else might happen and wanted to be sure they were ready before even considering any next steps.

"Yes, we are," he agreed, moving slowly up her body never moving his gaze from hers.

"If I have proposed then I must be ready to finish that bond."

"Oh, you did propose." She blushed again, but did not fluster as she had before. His deep sensual tones made her arch beneath him as he came back up placing his face right above hers.

"And you did say yes," she told him, slightly breathless with anticipation.

"Oh, yes I did." He placed himself at her entrance and slid slowly all the way into her ready wanting body. Her groan of pleasure set off like a pistol at the start of a race, shivering from the pleasure she took of his joining with her. The thrust his hips slowly, plunging deeply, wanting to find that spot that had blown her mind when he had loved her at dawn a few days before.

He arched his back, pressing his hips to hers and knew that he had found it when she wrapped her arms and legs around him, arching her back until he was sure it would break. He stilled until she started relax and then he moved again, that same intimate touch. Again she arched beneath him, eyes closed, mouth open in ecstasy, her cries strangled. He repeated it a third time and was rewarded with feeling her shatter beneath him, holding on so tightly to him that he could barely breathe.

At the apex of her pleasure he leaned down and whispered in ear, "Take me. Make me yours." Then he turned his head to her mouth and pressed his teeth to her flesh, biting as she did, completing their union and bond in pounding streams of pleasure that left them breathless, broken and healed all at once. "My wife," she said as he kissed her healing neck wound. She shivered and held him closer.


	20. Surrender Myself

"I have this thing I like to do. I guess I have always done it, though time and technology make it much easier than it was when I first started. I explore until I find something that pulls at me, catches my soul in a loose cage that holds me, and captures my attention. I surrender myself to that thing and let it take me, completely. It usually starts with music."

Eric reached for his coffee and took a sip before going on with his recording. "It doesn't always start there, but I find music, as the old saying goes, soothes the savage beast in me. It stills him, and allows him to catch the barest glimpse of something larger than himself.

"It can be on the radio, or in a movie, or in some YouTube video that I find in the purest of accidents. Not everything affects me this way," he laughed. "I am grateful for that, because in my quests for connections and larger understanding I could easily lose myself entirely. I am grateful for that," he said with more certainty. "Because no matter how far I go, how deep I look, there is some buffer that will push me back into this earthly shell where I belong. Where I need to be…but still there is the sense of _more_ , of a vast _something_ that I not only want to touch, I need to touch. I think we all need to touch it, with our finger tips, just a light acknowledgement that we are aware.

"When I find this thing that cages me, I seek all the connections to it. If the song is in a movie I look at the other songs that have been selected for that soundtrack and try and force my mind into looking at the shapes they form, the images they represent. Then I explore the bands that made those songs, seeking to contain the visions of those artists and to touch them with the same moment of acknowledging grace that I use for the _more_ that I mentioned before."

A blinding smile of joy split his face as the thought of all the art and artists he had found in this way and how he had swam in their visions, buoyed by their dreams. "I have found some extraordinary things by following the threads granted by the musical direction of those of lay down the background score of movies and TV shows.

"I listen for hours and wonder at the person who opened that door to those things for me. I wonder at the life of the person who became eventually the one who heard that music before me and decided that this, this scene, this story was the place where it belonged.

"I think of the musicians who studied and who bled their lives into those notes and lyrics. Their adventures and their mishaps that formed them into the perfect creature to channel those forces into ethereal notes that could come across time and space to touch me in such an intimate way.

"They are out there now." He closed his eyes, his voice cracking just a little from all the emotion he was tapping into to make himself be heard. "Those people who by luck, or fate, or sheer stubbornness of will have found themselves in such a place of grace and beauty to open our hearts and minds. Right now, they are sitting beside you in a coffee shop as you listen to these words, they are riding the bus beside you. They are standing behind you in the supermarket checkout line. They are holding the door open for you as you enter when they exit.

"They are moving through their lives, meeting new people, losing friends, making friends, taking all the steps they need to take to be the people they need to be. To be the people we need them to be.

"Then I think of the ones are yet to come. They will be different, a sign of their times, made in generational forges one cannot truly comprehend who stands on the outside of the events that form and shape. I think of the children who will tell our stories, their stories in paintings, in books, in photographs, in movies and in songs. I see them as tiny flickering lights who burn to hold back the darkness, who burn their brightest in the sharing of themselves fearlessly.

"I want, like every one of you out there, to shield them from the wind, to nurture their budding flames and to protect them from the tempest winds that seek to snuff them out before their find their voices and lift them up for us." He sat back now, his brilliant smile fading a little. "But…that is not always possible.

"The hard truth is simply this…when you look at any piece of art and think of how it came together, there are dark colors in its composition. Which, I guess, is an artsy-fartsy way of saying that as hard as it may be to understand, bad things have to happen. Some lights have to get snuffed out for the ones who make it to shine brighter, to give depth and dimension to their expressions of what it means to be alive.

"There must be variations and experiences and losses as well as joy and wonder to make a sound that we can hear. To make something that can touch us, and reach us, because we are all each wonderfully complex and beautifully made." He took another drink, cradling the warm mug in his hand, turning it in the desk light, studying it carefully as if it held the secrets he needed to bring this thought home.

"The individual journeys of those people make me feel very small when I think of the circumstances they faced to share their gifts with us. How they touch me, how they reach for us all, how they try with every fiber of their being to show us one simple truth. We are all connected. We are all one." He sighed.

"You ever walk out of a movie theatre at the end of a great film and for a second as you mingle with the crowd heading to the exit have a thought flit through your mind that you have some connection to those people through the experience that you just shared? The man to left in his long coat, the couple hand in hand in front of you, for just a moment your heart breaks because of those moments in the dark when you laughed together? When you cried together and in those actions some bond that you cannot named was formed between you all?

"You don't know their names and you didn't see their faces but you felt them all around you, their hearts and minds open with yours as the story fed you all? You are no longer strangers, for just that fleeting moment you are kindred?

"I wish that feeling could last longer and not fade by the time we hit the street outside and turn back into our own lives. I wish we could remember that those people are still and always connected to us through that experience. I wish we could remember that we are their brothers and their sisters and that in times of trouble when all it might take to save a life and nurture a spark to a flame is a small kindness from those around us.

"The next time you hold the door open for someone to enter as you leave a place, look them in the eyes. Look for a bit of yourself in them. Believe that they cry out for the same things that you do, that they need the same things you need and just…smile."

32XXXXXXXXXXXX23

Eric was holding Sookie's hand when walked into the bank. They were both smiling, giddy at the feelings that been flowing between them since they completed the bonding the morning before. They had been a little anxious about what might come of that final sharing of blood but so far everything had seemed the same. Well, almost everything. They had been unable to keep their hands off each other.

 _Their very_ married _hands_ , he thought as they stepped up to the counter.

"Stop it!" she whispered to him, playfully as she heard him begin to list all the varied ways he could think of to show his new wife his appreciation for her proposal. The returning smile was wiped from his face and replaced by a grimace of pain when the teller's thoughts blasted through his mind like someone had just turned the knob all the way to 11.

 **I HAVE GOT TO LEAVE AT 5 TODAY. THAT ASSHOLE MANAGER BETTER NOT MAKE ME WORK OVERTIME.**

Sookie heard it herself and then in echo through Eric, creating almost a static feedback. It hit her hard, too but she was used to managing telepathy on a grand scale, it was not as debilitating to her, though she would hardly call it pleasant. Eric doubled over, her catching him before he hit the floor.

Looking around she saw a chair in the far corner of the office, she shuffled him over and sat him down, kneeling in front of him as he struggled to catch his breath. His face was pale and sweat had broken out on his forehead.

She squeezed his hand and blocked her own thoughts from him so there would be one less voice in the din. "The result of the final bonding," she whispered to him in quiet tones. He nodded and gasped as he tried to organize all the thoughts that were swirling around in his head. Through the bond she could feel his pain and his fear at this new unknown. She sent him calm and reached out build a telepathic buffer to his mind with hers. She took some of his pain into herself, offering him a chance to catch his breath. The only evidence of her suffering a slight frown that marred her forehead.

Eric let out a slow breath of relief. "What did you do?"

"One of the benefits of the bond. I can share your pain." His hand squeezed hers in thanks as his eyes drifted shut a moment. He took a few deep breaths and was about to ask Sookie to help him back to the car and out of the closed confines of the bank. He needed some air, and he needed some distance from the loud broadcaster behind the counter. He was about to rise when the doors opened behind Sookie. A man entered wearing a mask and brandishing a gun.

"GET DOWN! ON THE FLOOR!" Sookie flipped around growling as two other men entered with masks and rifles.

"You have to be kidding me," she said ready to move when Eric's hand clamped down on her shoulder like a vise.

"No," he told her.

"I can stop them," she said turning back, knowing they had only moments before the masked men turned and saw them there. She could kill them before even one of those moments was up.

"No," he told her again. The look on his face was almost peaceful. She checked the bond between them and felt something she had not felt before. Something new rising inside him. "Sometimes, just sometimes, Sookie, death is not the answer." She opened her mouth to argue, but his lips crashed into hers before she could speak.

 _I love you, wife,_ he told her with his tangled mind before he broke the kiss and stood, stepped in front of her to shield her small form behind his and raised his hands in the air. The gunmen spotted them and ordered again, "DOWN ON THE FLOOR!" He nodded and then took a step toward them. Immediately, all three guns were pointed directly at him.

He felt Sookie moving before she could and told her again with his mind, _NO_.

Up to now his telepathy had only worked with Sookie, but the buffer she had created a moment before allowed him some fashion of control in this new world of a thousand minds. He reached out to the armed gunmen first, with this empathy to feel them, and then with his mind to hear them.

They were brothers. Their mother was dying of cancer and had been denied medical treatment by their HMO. At their wits end, unable to watch her fade away and unable to do anything they had decided to steal the money they needed for her care.

In seconds he saw their lives unfold. An abusive father who abandoned them as children, a mother who worked three jobs to feed and clothe them. They had all dropped out of school and started work as soon as they could to help but she was sick by then, and now she was dying. They couldn't get her what she needed from washing dishes and pumping gas.

"I SAID GET DOWN!" Tommy, the oldest brother came closer, his finger tightening on the trigger causing Sookie to gasp behind him. Her terror shot through him, and then her rage that he refused to _let her help._

 _This won't help your mother_ , Eric whispered into his mind. He saw the boys eyes go round in the cutout holes of his mask. The robber's body jerked applying a dangerous amount of pressure on the trigger. Eric could feel the boys burning pain and anger as if it were his own. _Then let it be my own. I take it from you,_ Eric thought, taking a deep breath as he swung the door wide open between them and smiled as he looked the young man in the eye. _You are not alone_ , Eric said in his mind as he removed the pain and guilt from the man child before him.

Both their bodies convulsed from the transfer. The robber relaxing, the gun in his hand falling to the floor even as Eric's face contorted with emotions that were not his own. In the bond Sookie felt what he was feeling and she instinctively reached out to help him. These emotions were no strangers to her and she had years of practice at managing them. Her fangs came down as they thrummed the strings inside her but she remained still and forced her mind to maintain the connection and ease Eric's efforts.

He sighed in relief, bringing his focus back to the masked assailant. _Go home, son. Take your brother's and go be with your mother while you can._ A sob escaped the mask before he turned and commanded the others to follow.

The tension in the building released like a balloon popping when the door closed behind them. Eric wobbled on his feet and then felt Sookie steady him from behind. She helped him sit back down in the chair. His head was pounding and he felt like he needed to throw up. Dimly he saw her move at blurry speed around the bank taking the memory of what had just happened from everyone present. She had the manger erase the tape that had captured everything on film and used the loud broadcasting teller as the patsy for accidentally bumping against the silent alarm that had the cops burst in a few minutes later.

By the time they had cleared up that nothing was wrong and Sookie had made a withdrawal as they had planned to do when they entered the bank, Eric had recovered enough to walk to the car under his own steam. He stayed in the car while she shopped, resting his pounding head on the cool glass of the window. When she came out pushing a large buggy of groceries he saw that she was on the phone. They each kept burners for emergency situations. Her voice carried to him as she opened the back of the car and started transferring the groceries.

"Yes, that's right, I want you to set up a trust for Tommy Mickens and then make sure that they and their mother have wait they need to either cure her or give her peace as she dies. Tell them a rich relative passed away and that you are to manage the money for them. They won't know what to do with it all, but see if you can, get them back in school and on their way to a better life." She stopped then, still moving groceries into the car. "Right. Contact me on this number if you have any questions." She disconnected the call and returned the buggy to the holding area in the parking lot.

He held his hand out to her, palm out when she climbed in behind the wheel. She laid hers on top and then laced her fingers with his. They drove home in silence hands still entwined.

When they got home he collapsed on the sofa, not able to stay awake a second more. At some point in the night she awakened him when she placed a soft kiss on his forehead, calling to mind how she once done that in another life after Lorena had attacked him. It was every bit as effective now as it had been then, the last of his headache fading with the touch of her warm lips. She lay down beside him, her arm and leg reaching across him. His face came down to bury itself in her hair, resting on the top of her head.

"I saw it today," he whispered to her in the dark.

"What?" she whispered back, not moving.

"How we are all connected. I mean, I _knew_ it, but today, I _saw_ it. Today I _felt_ it. I was able to do that because of you." He felt her getting ready to protest and cut her off before she could speak. "No, Sookie, it is because of you. Since we bonded it's like I am awake, fully on for the first time. You, my connection to you is, just like I told you, how I can find it in me to love them all." She didn't try and argue with him anymore, she could feel how tired he was, the weariness cutting into her even.

"I love you," she told him, placing a kiss to his chest through his shirt and then snuggling closer to him, letting sleep take them both away. Everything she needed to say could wait until he was healed and ready to hear it.


	21. I Can't Imagine

When Eric awoke the next morning Sookie was not there beside him. He sat up and called her name. When she did not answer he reached into their bonds and connections to find her. At first there was nothing and he felt the adrenaline spike through his system making his heart race. He pushed out further and dug deeper searching before he found the tiniest spark of her. Quickly, pulling on his shoes, he rose and followed the feel of her like a fish on a lure.

He was halfway to the barn when he heard thudding and grunting coming from inside. The doors were open, reassuring him that she was inside in addition to the small internal sense he had of her coming closer as he moved. When he reached the doorway he stopped and leaned against the frame, just watching.

She had brought his old punching bag down from the loft, cleared out the main floor and hung it up. She was currently giving it hell, but he suspected that she was holding back a lot. She could cream that old bag if she really let go. She was wearing only a white tank top, black shorts and sneakers. Her hair was up in a ponytail that bounced with every punch she threw into the bag. She had been out here for some time judging from the sweat that covered her body.

He watched intently as her muscles bunched and released while she moved, the way her chest heaved as she took in air to repeat the moves over and over. She danced around the bag then and he caught a glimpse of her face. Her expression was fierce and angry. Her fangs were down and her mouth curled into a snarl. He tried again to feel her but she was still only barely there. She had closed down from him. He frowned, she had never done that before.

He didn't like not being able to feel her beating next to his heart. It was only when it was gone that he realized how much she had become a part of him. "Wanna talk about it?" he asked her, not moving from the doorway.

"Not now," came her terse reply, her punches picking up more speed and landing so hard it made him wince. She was angry, and the odds were good that she was angry at him. He didn't care for that either. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had her spitting angry. She was pissed about what he had done the day before.

For just a moment he tried to slip into her shoes, see the events of yesterday through her eyes. "When you are ready, I will be inside," he told her, waiting a moment to see if she would say something. The only sound was her increased punches.

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She came in two hours later, her clothes soaked and the sour expression still on her face as she walked by him sitting on the sofa reading a book. She passed him not saying anything and a few minutes later he heard the shower come on. She still had their connections closed, so he waited rather than trying to join her.

Twenty minutes later she came out and sat beside him on the sofa. He closed the book and turned toward her. She turned so she could look him in the face. She assessed him, noted that he still had dark circles beneath his eyes, that his skin was still pale. Slowly, she opened the bond and felt for him. His essence swirled around her, moved through her causing her to sigh in pleasure before she again felt the bone deep weariness that still rode him. "You are not well." It wasn't a question.

Eric knew what he was feeling, and she was right. Yesterday had been exhausting and painful and glorious and he wouldn't change any of it except for the fact that she had been hurt by it in some way that he couldn't truly understand. That he would change if he could. He needed her to help him understand what it was that he wasn't able to see on his own.

"I have no wish to fight and upset you, but I know that you will not like what I have to say," she told him. He reached out for her hand, his thumb caressing the back of it, encouraging her to speak what was on her mind.

"I can't stand that you put yourself in harm's way," she said quickly as though admitting her feelings was something she would rather not do. "I can't stand that you refused to let me do what I was made to do." Her anger and confusion swirled around him.

"I can't imagine," he told her, still stroking her palm. "The last time you stood in front of danger for me was when the Dark Fae came in to get us in Tennessee. Even then, when I barely knew you, it was almost more than I could do to drive away and leave you there. We are one now. I know that eventually we will find ourselves in a place like that again and I can't imagine how I will be able to stand down and let you do what you need to do." He raised her hand to his lips, kissing the palm softly, closing his eyes as he savored the feeling of her skin on his lips.

"When we face this unavoidable, unimaginable moment I will not even be able to help you as did me yesterday. I know that you helped me set that boy free from the pain and anger that blinded him. I know that you grounded me, and even took some of it yourself, from me as I took it from him." He looked into her eyes then so quiet and so serious she forgot to breathe for a moment. "I didn't know any of that was going to happen. I didn't know I could do that. I didn't know you could do that with me…for me." She took a shuddering breath, her words catching in throat.

"If you didn't know, then why, why did you do it, Eric? He could have killed you!" Both of his eyebrows went up and a ghost of a smile floated across his beautiful face.

"Yes, he could have. I was pretty sure he might before I just…" he stopped, now bringing his other hand up to cover hers, sandwiching it between both of his. "I thought I could feel how bad he was hurting as if it were my pain and the next thought was…then let it be mine, there is no need for both of us to feel like this.

"I thought about it yesterday, while you were in the store and I realized that maybe I had always done it before and never realized it, though never quite like that. As I look back at the people I have known and the places I have been I can see that when those around me were hurting I would do something that made them feel better. I think now for the first time I did it with conscious thought. I think now I see it for what it is."

"And what is it?"

"I can't fix them. That is the trap for me, I see it very clearly. I can't make the boogey man get out from under the bed and apologize before he strolls away. I can't erase the scars that remind them of where they have been and that sometimes guide their choices in which path they take next. I can't pilot them around to better circumstances or better decisions. I don't want to do that anyway.

"We make our greatest mistakes when the pain is so great that it is all we can see and all we feel. We fall off the edge of the world as we stumble around and scream for someone, anyone at all to come and see us. To come and save us. What I can do for them is offer them a moment of peace and clarity in that pain. For just a moment, the space of single breath I can make it stop, and allow them to truly see what is around them. Maybe, just maybe then they can take a step further away from the edge rather than one closer to it. That's all." Sookie laughed bitterly, pulling her hand away from his grasp.

"That's all," she said, her anger rising again. "You act as if that is so little and then bet your very life on that little thing." He looked at her, his eyes so filled with compassion that tears rose up blurring her vision.

"What did you think was going to happen, Sookie? Did you really think that my life was mine any more than yours has belonged to you?" She rocked back, his words hitting her with the same speed and power that she had used on the punching bag. The pain he caused in her burned him like cuts on his own flesh. He moved, faster than he thought he could, to catch her and pull her into his embrace. She was so stunned she didn't fight him. "I'm sorry," he whispered in her hair. "I didn't mean to hurt you, but you must understand that from the moment you entered my life that this is where we were headed.

"This is my life, and you have helped me accept that. I don't think I could have accepted it if you had not been here to help me. You are my chicken and my egg, Sookie." Her hands clutched his back, the desperation in her touch killing him softly. "Tell me," he said in her ear. Her face was buried his chest muffling her words slightly.

"I…I never thought about it like this. I never thought about what it would be like if you died before me. All this time I was sure that I would fall before you. That Warlow or the war would take me and that I would never have to see you hurt.

"Before we met in Shreveport, you were always uppermost in my mind, your protection, your safety. You were always more than a duty but I knew with absolute unshakeable certainty that if you died I would be dead already."

"And now, yesterday, I blew the certainty of those foundations away, didn't I?"

"Yes, you fucking did! And you didn't even think about it!" Her hands came around now to bunch the front of his shirt in her fists, pushing him away and pulling him closer all at once. She was fighting him, but not really. If she wanted to fight him, or get away there would be nothing he could have done to stop her.

"I can't think about it, any more than you can. I was made to do this, just as you were made to do what you do," he told her as he rubbed her hair, soothing her. "You told me the other night that you wouldn't change anything that had happened because it brought us here. Remember?" She nodded her head, and he felt a small flare of anger at his reminder of her words to drive home his point. "I heard you and I believed you when you said that, Sookie. We are in this together now, more than ever. We just have to do what we do and remember that we are in this together."

"I'm scared, Eric. In all my existence I have never been scared of anything! But I am scared of losing you, of being left here without you and I don't know what to do!" she screamed into his chest, bunching her fists tighter in his shirt and pressing herself closer to him. He held her tighter trying again to imagine what this must be like for her.

Being scared was nothing new to him. It was a natural part of the human existence, and had been something that he had felt on a regular basis for months now. It was beyond him to find the memory of the first time he had experienced this maddening futile emotion. He closed his eyes and looked deeply into himself, seeking something, anything that would help her through this. Finally, in the deepest part of himself he saw a glimmer. Sighing he placed his lips next to her ear and spoke from his heart.

"You were so brave yesterday, Sookie. When I kissed you and told you that I loved you, my wife you stood at my back and when I needed you, you set aside your own pain and anchored me. Your bond, the gift of your love to me helped me more than I can ever express. They helped that boy to take a step away from the edge. You saved four lives in that bank yesterday, Sookie. Maybe even more, because if I had failed everyone in that bank may have died.

"You are a great warrior. You fight. You bleed. You kill. Those have been your weapons since the beginning, but yesterday you added a new weapon to your arsenal. You loved. You loved me and in turn you loved them, too. You were a marvel to behold before, more than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams, but yesterday your strength and beauty brought me to my fucking knees!

"Thank you. I haven't said that yet, but thank you so much, Sookie. Thank you for helping me and for helping them and for knowing, for just knowing that what needed to happen next was to set up that trust for Tommy and his family. I love that you did that."

"There was no point in any of what happened yesterday if he had no better choices to make," she said into his chest.

"And I love that you saw that." She pulled her face back then to look at him. Her eyes were swollen and her nose was red from the silent tears she had shed while she held him close. She looked at him, really looked at him and he could feel the anger she had because of that fear lessen a little inside her.

"I'm always going to be scared that I am going to lose you," she told him, searching his eyes, begging him to understand. He smoothed the hair back from her face.

"And I am always going to be scared that I am going to lose you," he told her. "But I am going to shove that down and remember that loving you, having this chance to love you even for a second is the most important thing I have ever done, that I could ever do."

There was more that he planned to say but she kissed him then, replacing words with gestures as she loved him, opening her veins to heal him and her body to make him whole, restoring him as she always did not because it was what she was made to do, but because it was the only thing she wanted to do.

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Later, as she slept beside him exhausted from her workout and her emotions he immersed himself in the journey of the woman who rested in his arms. He wondered if Older Eric had known what she could be, that she could grow to become all that she now was. He remembered then, what Older Eric had told him on the day he touched the crystal.

 _…if you can find it in yourself to bury your natural prejudices, your fear and your anger you will see the woman at your side will make differences in your life that you never dreamed possible…_

There was another memory, too. Sookie's first memory that she had shared with him the day they met.

 _…You're going to feel things. You will feel them more deeply and more exquisitely than any being in history ever has. At first it will seem like a liability but if you can find a way to embrace it, then it will make you stronger than you can imagine. You will be able to do anything, my little 500K13…_

On that day so long ago when he sucked the bullets out of her back and ran away with her into the night there was no way he could have understood those words, but now, they were crystal clear. He remembered her sobbing into his chest, angry that she was afraid for the first time.

As he drifted off himself he wondered what it would be like to be as certain as she was about things, and to be in a position only now after everything she had seen and done to feel fears paralyzing embrace for the first time ever. He was marveling about her bravery when he slipped under.

In his sleep he reached for Sookie but she wasn't there. Frowning he sat up and found himself sitting on tree branch, his feet dangling below him. He looked around and saw that the branches of this tree were so large they extended out beyond what his vision allowed him to see.

Looking around he saw that galaxies spun in its branches, stars shining brightly as planets orbited them. They seemed close enough to touch but when he extended his hand they were so far beyond his reach that he saw the illusion for what it was.

 _Where am I?_ He asked, not really expecting an answer.

 ** _Where you have always been._**

He jumped and looked around. He was positioned at the place where the limb he was sitting on met the trunk of the tree. He looked down for the ground but there was none below him. There was only the inky blackness of infinity below his hanging feet.

Eric looked around, again, his eyes wide with wonder. A sense of peace filled his entire body as he sat there, legs dangling. He knew this place, these limbs that ran forever, together. His heart jumped and he knew that this place was the _more_ he felt around him sometimes. This was the _more_ , and here the _more_ knew _him_ as he knew _it_. In his dream he leaned back against the massive tree trunk, swung his long legs up and crossed them at the ankles. He smiled as he looked around, awe and joy stamped on his features. He could feel it in his bones and in his heart. He was home.


	22. Steal You Away

"I find myself thinking about time today. How there is too much of it and somehow still never enough. Philosophers would argue that it is the looming end of all things that gives any meaning at all to the beats that pass from the beginning to the end. Is that true? That things only have meaning because we know that nothing can last?" Eric sipped his coffee and looked deep inside himself to answer that question for himself.

"I am of two minds myself. I can see how deep and poignant each action and feeling can be when we know that we are giving away a priceless piece of ourselves in each one. It gives each conversation and each friendship such a rich dark sweetness that it feels like I imagine blood would taste. Things we can't get back, time that was never ours but we borrow it, we steal it to share with each other.

"Late at night that used to paralyze me, thinking that the time I spent with this person or that person left me that much shorter of the total. I used to wonder if I was spending it wisely, since I could have no actual return of those minutes and hours. It was only later I realized that the return was the experience I got from those exchanges. The exchange of viewpoints and ideas that either reinforced my own or spun my head around completely to show me something that I likely would never have found on my own.

"Those gifts of my time with those people I allowed to light in my life and perch there so they could sing their unique and beautiful songs, written in tears and blood. I carry them with me now and consider the time I spent to get them more than a bargain. I am made rich by my sacrifice.

"The rest of me, even with that insight, feels fearful in the knowledge that my moments are indeed precious and few and that the loss of them is something that I mourn, but I can't mourn it properly because to do so only costs me more precious moments that I don't really have.

"I'm running from that loss with every breath I take, every distraction I make, and I am fighting with the realization that if I run too fast I may miss something that I need. I might miss something I will want to have when the sands all run out for Eric Northman. I struggle to stop and smell each rose, lest they be nothing more than a long red streak in my peripheral as I speed by on my way to something else. I want to take their scent with me into whatever comes next, where memories of all the wondrous things I have experienced may be all that I have left." He paused again and finished his coffee.

"For at least a moment today, longer if you can, be where you are today. Stop thinking. Stop running. Stop avoiding and really look around you. Look at the faces you love, the ones you might love if you gave yourself the time to truly see them. Smell the flowers if you find some. Sing a song that always makes you smile and hold the hand of someone who makes you feel like you understand what all this is about.

"Today, love yourself and those around you who make up the landscape of your mind, of your world. Tell them some truth of you that they may not know, or reinforce one you shared in the past and remind them that time is an illusion, a distraction and a gift."

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Eric had been thoughtful and quiet all day. In their wide open bonds he still felt very far away from her and she didn't like it. They had agreed to allow each other the privacy of their thoughts unless there was danger so Sookie had not pressed in to see what was on his mind, rather trusting him to tell her if it was something she needed to know.

She was still processing the idea that he might pass before her into the next realm. She took it in turns of acceptance and angry denial, swearing that she would let nothing happen to him and then feeling that hot ire dashed with cold buckets of how she could not protect him from his damn fool self. She struggled to understand how he could risk himself for one young angry confused boy when the world hung in the balance. Then she told herself the truth in the quiet corners of her mind and acknowledged that what she felt was more personal.

The question she kept asking over and over was how could he risk leaving her? Leaving what they felt together. That made her feel selfish, small and unworthy. She liked that even less. In the clarity of the mad desire to stay with Eric forever she knew that she was betraying the very reason for her existence. Unacceptable! She shouted at herself, as if the command of her reason could overrule the needs of her heart.

There were moments when she longed for the time before he knew she existed. It was all so clear then. She protected him. She watched over him. She lived for him. She would die for him. There was no need to worry about how he would feel if she died, and more importantly no need to worry about how she would feel if he died. She was filled with thoughts of confusion and pain that had been her constant companions since the stunt he had pulled in the bank when she came in from her late night perimeter patrol. She would go back out in a few hours, but now she wanted to see him. She needed to reassure herself that for now at least, he was here and he was fine.

It had become her habit to look in on him at night, sometimes she slid in next to him, letting herself be soothed with the way his sleeping arms reached for her, pulling her close. Some nights she truly needed to feel herself wrapped in his arms. Other nights she satisfied herself with smoothing his hair back and kissing his forehead softly before going back out into the night to watch for signs that they had been found. If there was normalcy to be found it was in standing guard over Eric while he slept peacefully.

Her sharp eyes noticed the dim flickering light before she slowly opened the door to his room and stepped inside. There was candles lit all over the room, pulled from Mrs. Northman's old emergency storm supply. They had been burning for a while, and they cast a light over the sleeping man sitting in the middle of the bed. He was naked, his long graceful limbs relaxed with his head resting on the headboard. A soft snore escaped his sleeping form, making her smile.

She stood there and just took in the incredibly beautiful image before her. His long legs were crossed at the ankle. They ran for miles up his lap, where for some reason he was holding a small pillow over his manly bits. She stifled a giggle picturing him fidgeting as he waited for her to appear. He must have been nervous about the display of his body, trying to figure out if modesty or flagrant nudity was more seductive.

The pillow was perfect, she decided. It allowed her to admire the molding of his skin over muscle and sinew without the distraction of her body overriding the softer more subtle emotions that he conjured inside her. Once she was captured in his virile maleness it was hard to remember anything but how much she wanted him. She shook her head at her perfect he was, in deed as we as in appearance.

His large hand on that small pillow that attached to those beautiful strong arms, his broad chest, lightly covered in hair. The rise of his pecs as be breathed slowly in and out captivated her attention for several moments before she moved on this face. Her breath caught in her chest as her hands itched to touch him. Her slight gasp breaking the silence of the room making his stir.

He blinked sleepily at her, a slow smile spreading over his face. "Hi," he said, his hand involuntarily squeezing the pillow on his lap. "I was waiting for you." She held her ground, allowing her fists to curl to assuage the need to touch his candle lit skin. "I know you come in here when you are done with first rounds. I wanted to surprise you." He paused but she remained still and silent. He went on.

"I've been thinking a lot lately about time and how we need to take some for us."

"Us?" she echoed, taking a step closer to the bed.

"Yes. Most of my most precious memories have you in them. I want more."

"More?" She came a step closer.

"If our jobs were like everyone else's I would say we were calling in sick and playing hooky. But they aren't, we live this every day and every night with no certainty that there will be another. That is important, very important and I know that we will do what we have to do whenever we have to do it, but right now, I want to…steal you away."

"Away?" Another step closer to him. He shifted his body on the bed. His small pillow was becoming too small.

"I want to be just a man who has all the time in the world to show the woman he loves what she means to him."

"Means to him?" She was right beside the bed now, the soft glow of the candles pooling in her eyes.

"Surely you know, Sookie?" She shook her head slightly.

"Tell me."

"I've thought about it a lot. That's what I do, you know? Think about things, turning them this way and that trying to see how they fit." She nodded slightly, too well aware of the racing mind of Eric Northman, never at peace. Even when he was asleep his dreams tangled and trembled on the edge of revelation. "I think about you all the time. I have since the moment you appeared in my life." She moved slowly unbuttoning her top, letting is slide to the floor as he spoke. He paused, taking a quivering breath as he saw her in the candlelight.

"I-I," he stammered a little as she reached for the button of her jeans, finding his rhythm again as she slid them smoothly over her rounded hips and her long legs to pool at her feet before she stepped out of them. Her foot moved them to the side and she started to toe off her sneakers, first the right and then the left. "I have concluded," he finally found his voice, "That timing and circumstance be damned I would have fallen in love with you no matter what."

Naked now, she climbed slowly onto the bed, settling over his legs right below the pillow that was now doing nothing to hide his arousal. "I know that all I would have had to do was slow down enough to see the woman inside you. Your passion. Your certainty. Your strength. The way you see me. The way you make me see myself." She slid up and placed her hand over his on the pillow. She leaned closer, her face right in front of his.

"Is this for me?" she asked him, flicking her gaze down at the pillow before coming back to his.

"Yes," he rasped out, his brain and his words leaving him now in the face of this goddess in his bed covered only in flickering candlelight. His words had done so little to show her his heart. He felt his center cave slightly in disappointment. He had practiced this in his mind as he waited for her, but her presence like this before him made him an inarticulate lump of desire to just touch her.

"I've never been much with words, Eric. You keep talking while I show you what you mean to me." She removed his hand from the pillow, and then she removed the pillow revealing his gift to her. She slid further down his body, her long hair feathering out against his straining thighs as she kissed her way down his belly, rubbing her cheek on his erection, her eyes closed as she allowed the sensation of his hard hot flesh to caress her skin. He swallowed in anticipation of what was coming, his hands shaking so much that he fisted the bed covers next to his body to steady them.

"You…mean…"he gasped as she took him into heat of her mouth, swirling around the tip of him with her tongue several times before she bobbed her head gently and took him deeper into her mouth. " _Everythingtome_!" he moaned as he lost himself in the sensation of her taking him this way. She sucked him hard and she pulled her mouth up his shaft, returning the sentiment of his words in her actions. He let loose his right hand of the covers and let it tangle in her hair as she took him again. He lost the ability to think and almost to speak. "Everything," he said again, and later again, his mind stuck in a groove as she worked him toward a release that she denied him just yet.

When her lips released him her hand replaced them on his shaft, continuing to pump and squeeze him in the same maddening rhythm she had produced with her mouth and tongue. She kissed his thigh and he heard the unmistakable sound of her fangs coming down. Anticipating the sensation of her bite made his hips thrust up from the bed pumping into her hand in a way he would never have allowed himself to do in her mouth. His vision grew blurry, his body covered in sweat he fell back onto the pillow, still chanting his last coherent thought. "Everything."

He felt her hand settle at the base of his shaft and tighten there, almost painful, but not quite, just as her fangs slipped into his femoral artery. He rose off the bed screaming as waves of pleasure rolled through his body, hips bucking as she fed from him, and held his cock in gentle vise refusing to let him spill over.

Later he would replay these moments and realize that she had been telling him how she felt about their relationship. She had been telling him what he meant to her. That he took her right to the edge of reason and madness and pleasure beyond measure. He took her right to the edge of losing herself and then he pulled her back and gave her everything she could ever need. She told him that he was her life, that he too was everything to her.

She replaced her hand with her mouth again, and led him to orgasm in seconds, taking his essence into her as she had just moments before in a different way. It was too much for him to process and he blacked out for a few moments when he came. When he returned to himself she was laying on his chest looking at him with a satisfied smile on her face.

"I-I was supposed to be showing you what you meant to me," he got out, his words wobbly and uncertain.

"You did," she assured him, pressing her body tightly to his and smoothing his hair back from his forehead.

"I meant that I-"

"Shhh-"she said to him, rubbing the frown lines off his face with her gentle fingers. "You gave me the gift of yourself. Something you have been making your whole life, husband. Is there anything that could matter more to a woman who loves you?" He opened his mouth to speak again but she turned her face to the side and rested her cheek on his chest.

"I stood on the edge of your light for so long, Eric. In touching distance but never touching you. Now to be here in this dream with you, means more to me than any words could ever express. That is why now I am afraid." His arms came up around her to hold her closer to him. "I, too, have thought of many things since the day in bank. I have wondered if feeling this fear now is worth having you like this." She turned back to look him in the eye again. "And yes, it is. For a lifetime, for a day, for a moment to be this close to you, to know you like this with my body and my heart, yes, it is worth it. I am as much yours as you are mine, Eric Northman."

He rolled them over then, resting on top of her, loving the way the candlelight made her skin seem golden and kissable. "You keep talking, while I show you what you mean to me," he said as he kissed a trail down her body. Within moments her strangled cries of "Everything," filled the candlelit room.

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They took time and bent around themselves, made it theirs, claiming its speeding moments and creeping hours as they claimed each other. They laughed and loved their way through all the rooms of the old Northman house. Occasionally, they stopped for food or water, making even that a game between them, holding nothing back and thinking only of the moments they were in together. They soon learned that for all they knew of each other there was a vast topography of secret sounds and feelings that they had barely imagined yet to explore.

Laughing, he chased her from the kitchen, where she had demanded Twinkies and water before the next leg of their journey into discovery. He still didn't care for the cakes himself but he liked the sweetness of her kiss after she indulged in the high calorie treat. He was preparing for a full on chase through the house when she stopped in front of his laptop at the old desk he used for his recordings. He swept her into his arms and claimed his kiss before she slipped away again, holding his hand and pulling him to the chair in front of the equipment. She looked shyly back at him, biting her lip. "Show me what you do here?" Pleasure swept through him at her request. She had provided all the equipment, the licensing and more often than not the inspiration for the passion he shared with his listeners, but she had kept her distance from his work and his work space.

He had not pressed her to share it, though he wanted to tell her all about it, like he did everything else. Sitting down in the chair he pulled her into his lap, situating her so that his long arms could work on either side of her. He opened the laptop and logged into his account, showing her how it worked. She watched intently, absorbing everything he did. Remembering that she had told him once she had always been a fan of Night Vision he asked her, "Would you like to hear my latest podcast?"

She looked him, her smile bright and big as she nodded and wriggled around in excitement. He hit play and settled back in the chair, pulling her to rest against his chest, hoping she wouldn't be disappointed. His voice filled the room, sounding strange to his own ears.

 _"I find myself thinking about time today. How there is too much of it and somehow still never enough."_

He glanced down at her once, her eyes were closed as she listened, and her face open and relaxed as his words flowed over her. Her only movement to place her hand over his where his arms were wrapped around her middle. At the end, she sniffed softly and turned around to place her arms around his neck. "You're really fucking good at this stuff," she said into his neck, her words slightly muffled. He growled low in his chest, preening at her praise. It felt good to be admired and appreciated by someone who meant everything to him. "How many listeners do you have now?"

"I haven't checked in a while. I try not to think about that. I think it's more important to stay focused on what I am saying, rather than worry about who is listening." She peeked up at him, her cheeks flush with emotion.

"Let's check." He laughed.

"OK, but the last time I checked it was…" he stopped.

"What's wrong?" His body had stiffened beneath her and his jaw was hanging open, eyes round in shock. She turned to look at the screen. The stat screen showed that there were over two hundred and fifty thousand subscribers to Night Vision. She squealed and hugged him. "That's great, right?"

"Uhhh…" she laughed at his inarticulate response to his listener count.

"Oh, you better go easy there, save that suave speech for the fans," she teased him. He managed to close his mouth.

"I don't understand. I looked last month and there were only ten thousand or so subscribers. How…?" She hugged him again, elated for his success at getting his message out.

"'The truth is out there!'" She quoted her favorite movie for him. His lips curled into smile despite his shock over what the stats board was telling him. "Have you Googled yourself?" Snapping somewhat back to himself, his smile became a lascivious smirk. He wagged his eyebrows at her, his eyes twinkling.

"I thought that was what you were for." She giggled again and turned back to face the computer pulling up the Google search engine and entering in Night Vision for a search. Moments later they were both sitting there with their mouths open.

They found dozens of message boards where fans talked about broadcasts both on the air and in podcast. There were Eric Northman fan sites, complete with pictures of him from his LA gig and in Shreveport. She leaned closer and looked at some of the comments beneath his photos. A growl filled the room, and she was startled to realize it was herself making that sound. She tried to reign in her jealousy but some of the things they suggested or flat out said about her husband made her hands clench and her fangs descend.

Moving past that quickly Eric clicked on another link. **_'Night Vision Convention- September 5, 6 & 7- Dallas Convention Center, Dallas, Texas'._** The fans were banding together to meet in person and share their stories. "What the hell?" he whispered over her shoulder as he read the details. At first he was shocked and then he felt the warmth start in his chest and move through his limbs. They had heard him! They had listened!

At the bottom of the page was comment after comment from listeners who pledged to be there and who told their stories about how his broadcasts had impacted their lives. There were people who had met through the message boards and become friends and supporters of each other, all planning to meet in person for the first time in Dallas in just a couple of weeks. "You didn't know?" she asked, leaning back against his chest, her face beside his as he stared at the screen transfixed.

"No. I mean I got a couple of emails from fans saying they would like to meet me, but I danced around it. It wasn't safe to think about that kind of thing. They never said…" his voice trailed away, the awe that filled it giving her goose bumps. He read on, not all of them could travel the distance, but they had the promises of those who could to stand up and share their stories for them. "Where did they get the money to rent an entire convention center, Sookie?"

She rolled the page up and found that some of Eric's biggest fans were big time corporate sponsors. Companies who wanted to take his words to heart and make them deeds to change the world we live in. "Leclerq Industries, A Greener World Today, For Tomorrow. DeCastro Technologies, Better Worlds Through Superior Technology." She gasped as she read the last one, "Sovegny Construction, headquarters Calgary, Canada. Godric!"

"The vampire? Godric the vampire?" She nodded, her mouth hanging open now.

"He told me that he was in Dallas now."

"I remember." If Eric had fangs they would be down now, too. A chill ran down his back as he saw the connections come together in his mind. Could it be a coincidence? He shook off the idea, he had always lived just south of Coincidence. No, this was another demonstration of how all things were connected. The realization simultaneously reassured and terrified him.

Why Dallas of all places? This was the second call for them to travel there. Dare he ignore it and insist on a third to extinguish his small remaining doubts that they were being summoned there? Was there some strange ley line of magics unknown to him that called them to this strange city? Some inescapable event that demanded they surrender to it and appear?

The rightness of that thought clicked so loudly inside him that he rocked in his chair, instinctively pulling Sookie closer to him.

"We're going to Dallas, aren't we, Eric?"

"I think so," he said in a voice that sounded as strange to him as his recorded voice had earlier. It was him, but it wasn't the sound he was used to hearing.

"It's calling us, isn't it?"

"I think so, Sookie. God help us, I think so." She was quiet for a few moments and then she reached up and shut down the computer, closing the screens deliberately one by one before closing the lid on his laptop. When the lights went out she turned back to him and place a soft kiss on his neck, running her hand up the back of his head threading her fingers through his hair gently.

"All right," she whispered between kisses. "But not yet. Tomorrow we will make our plans and face it together. But tonight, tonight I want to steal you away. Tonight you are just mine, my husband, my Eric, and for tonight the rest of the world can just go hang."

He wasn't hard to convince.


	23. Best Laid Plans

**_2065_**

"What are you still doing here, Godric?" They were sitting in Eric's office, Eric behind his desk, Godric in front of it as he had been the night he had been summoned to teach Hjärta how to be a vampire. She had been gone now for two weeks and the hole she had left in Godric's heart was not healing as he had told himself it would. He had left two nights before she did, and then had been unable to keep himself away from Area 51. Logically, he knew she was gone, but he felt closer to her when he was here.

He had made excuses about his visit, spending time with Pamela Ravenscroft, the scientist who had helped engineer Hjärta. She was a pioneer in the field of nanotechnology, her expertise providing the missing piece of how to fashion a living being from the supernatural DNA of so many beings, all of whom were at odds with each other. Her tiny machines introduced into the cloning process worked ceaselessly to repair tiny damages as Hjärta's own cells wrestled with each other for dominance.

Science and magic had made the woman he had looked for the past two thousand years. Fate and circumstance had given him only a few days with her before he was forced to let her go. Her path was not his, but no matter how many times he told himself that he was simply unable to accept it.

"I don't know," Godric finally admitted to his friend, smiling somewhat ruefully. "I think I am looking for something that is no longer here." Eric grimaced.

"I know how that is," he reached for his whiskey glass again and took a long deep swallow.

"It's not at the bottom of that glass, either," Godric told him, arching a brow, a concerned look on his face.

"I didn't think anything would still be here when she left," Eric admitted softly, swirling the amber whiskey in his glass. "I thought that her changing the past would change the present."

"Perhaps it has." Eric looked around his small office, gesturing with this empty hand.

"Where?"

"Despite our best efforts we know little of temporal stability. It is possible that we fractured time and created our own pocket universe here when she left. Cut off from the main time stream but still intact and immutable." He realized then that Eric had been counting on an ending here from her departure to the past. He also realized that Eric was determined to have one, be it from temporal collapse or liver failure from the rate he was drinking.

They had both changed so much since the Princess had been taken them. Her wounds had been fatal but theirs lingered. She bled out but they still bled every day from her loss. Godric felt it now more than he had before, the fresh wound in his heart from the loss of Hjärta rending his spirit all the way down to the old wound that would not heal.

They had lost Sookie. Twice. How could anyone survive that intact?

"Would you have sent her back if you had known that nothing would change here, Eric?"

"I'd like to think I would have," Eric told him, sounding tired and broken as he finished his drink in one large swallow. They both knew that was no answer.

32XXXXXXXXXXXX23

Three weeks later Godric was in a bar in San Diego waiting for a contact to show up with information as to Warlow's hide out. He had known even before he left Area 51 that this was his plan. He would find Warlow and take his piece of the Tempus Key. As for what happened after that, the only certainty was Warlow's death. The rest of the story split in Godric's mind down two even narrow paths. Either he would give the Key to Eric, or he would keep it for himself and find the witch who had opened the portal to send Hjärta back so he could go after her himself.

He had told no one what he was doing, barely even himself. As Eric had wanted to believe that he would have done the right thing, so did Godric about the choices that lay before him. The Tempus Key was too dangerous to leave with Warlow. That was the certainty that drove him on this one vampire kamikaze mission. The less certain chance that he could actually find Hjärta again was the hope that fueled him.

His watchful gaze searched the crowded bar for danger while his mind replayed their sparring sessions. His face was expressionless as his undead heart clenched in his chest.

"Is that all you got, vampire?" she had asked him, a sly smile on her face when she fought him to an impasse.

"All I've got?" he fired back moving at vampire speed to attack. She had laughed and moved in with the same blurry speed meeting him blow for blow, the sound of her laughter bouncing off the training room walls while she parried and thrust her Fae swords, seeking to draw blood and proclaim her victory.

He had been taking it easy on her, wanting to see how good her training had been. As a result she had grown cocky and reckless in her attack. He shifted on the balls of his feet, dropped down and spun around, his very sharp sword coming at her very tender flesh.

She jumped above his blade, spinning in mid-air to come rain down death from above. He barely fell back in time to keep his head. Rising from the floor he left his sword behind and wrapped his hand around her throat slamming her into the wall ten behind them. Air exploded from her lungs with her solid impact, her swords falling from her hands to the floor. Before she could inhale he was there, raising her feet above the floor with his grip. For a moment she panicked. Then he saw something shift in her eyes.

Her hand came down to his chest, palm open she blasted him full on with Fae light, sending him into the opposite wall of the training area. Before he could right himself she had his throat, raising his feet from the floor. His fangs came down as he summoned his ancient vampire strength to tear her hand away from his throat. He flipped them around, pressing her body to the wall with his as he held her hands down to her sides. "Give up?" he asked trying not to smile.

"Never," she said, her own fangs down now as her mind raced to find a way to turn this to her advantage. "TO ME!" she called out. He barely moved back in time to avoid the upper cut from Vengeance, or was it Death that came close to bringing his own? He could never tell them apart, and they were always moving so fast in his presence there was no time to try and discern the difference.

He levitated up off the floor rising to the ceiling and out of the reach of her flashing swords. Her howls of rage brought laughter up from deep inside him. When she stamped her foot furiously on the floor and blew an errant strand of blonde hair from her eyes to skewer him with her gaze he laughed all the harder. She pursed her lips fighting a smile of her own.

"You realize, of course," she called up to him, resting the points of her swords on the floor, "That this means I win?"

 _That was the moment I fell_ , he thought feeling the smile spread across his face again as the joy of that memory suffused his being. _That was the moment I knew I was meant to love her._

Maybe it was the distraction of her memory that left him vulnerable. Maybe it had been a trap from the beginning. Maybe this was just how it was always supposed to be, the only ending he could have with a woman who was never destined to be his.

He felt the needle slide into his neck, and then the sting of the silver invading his veins before the black closed in, blocking even the memory or her beautiful face staring up at him making his dead heart lurch as though it were trying to beat for the first time in two thousand years.

32XXXXXXXXXXX23

Godric opened his eyes and found himself face to face with the Dark Fae King. He was leaning down so close to Godric's face that they almost touched noses. "I remember you, vampire," the Dark Fae said thoughtfully as he stared into Godric's face. "I saw you last on the battle field." He leaned back, crossing his arms and resting his chin on his hand. "You were wicked with that mace." Warlow moved suddenly mimicking Godric's fighting moves. "BOOM!" he screamed suddenly, his voice echoing through the large room where Godric hung suspended from silver chains. They had eaten through his flesh to the bones. "Their heads exploded like melons!" he exclaimed joyfully, laughing at Godric's past battle glory. "Where did you learn how to do that so… _proficiently_?"

The silver injection had sliced Godric's veins to threads, speaking was nearly beyond him. It hardly mattered, it seemed that Warlow was speaking to himself. His head cocked to the side as if he were listening to someone else.

"Of course," Warlow said, clapping his hands together several times in his excitement. He leaned in close again. "You are quite old, aren't you vampire? You have lived lifetimes, mastered many weapons I am sure. Is that not so?" Again, not waiting for an answer he reached out and ran a hand down Godric's face, gentle at first and then digging his long nails in at the end tearing into him, removing skin and flesh. "Of course, compared to us you are but a babe in swaddling."

 _Us? Who is us_ , Godric wondered? Warlow leaned in and licked the blood from the wounds he had just inflicted. "MMMMM," he intoned his eyes rolling up into his head in exaggerated pleasure. "Tastes good, like a vampire should," he chanted as he turned away throwing his arms up in the air to an audience that only he could see. Then he bowed theatrically from the waist accepting imaginary accolades. When he turned to face Godric again, he hiccupped, covering his mouth looking abashed.

"Excuse me," he said politely, just before his mad eyes locked onto Godric's again. "Maybe I'm allergic to silver," he added by way of explanation for his action. Then quite suddenly, Warlow's entire body convulsed so hard his spine made a cracking sound. When he looked at Godric again his appearance had changed in some almost imperceptible way. He had seemed mad before, now he seemed cold and possessed by an energy that had not been there before.

"You are going to tell me everything, vampire."

 _No, no I'll tell you nothing_ , Godric thought. Of course, in the end he did. He couldn't help it. Hours later, when Warlow ripped into his chest and grabbed his heart he sent up a prayer of thanks that it was finally over, followed by a final thought that he hoped she could hear all the way back in the past.

 _Forgive me, Hjärta._

Godric was gone.

32XXXXXXXXXXXXX23

"Eric, you need to let me give you an injection of nanites." He knew that when Pam got something set in brilliant mind it was impossible to sway her, but stubbornness be damned! There was no fucking way he was going to let her put those fucking machines in his body. "You're not getting any younger, Northman, and frankly I never figured you for a coward."

"Coward! Who the fuck do you think you are, Doctor Ravenscroft?" Her hand went to her slim hip, her chin went up.

"The only one with a pair big enough around here to stand up to you!" she yelled back at him. "You're still in excellent health for a man your age, but that won't last forever, especially if you keep drowning in the bottle every night." He stood to his full height and glared down at her. He had a soft spot for Pam, but it wasn't that soft. Unintimidated she continued. "Look, Warlow is still out there somewhere and we need you!"

"The war is over," he ground out, his jaw locked in anger.

"For now, sure, but what about tomorrow? What if he gets tired of play crazy-winks all by himself and comes back for round two? Do you think we can beat him without you?" _Oh, how many fucks do I not give?_ This war was done, he had paid with everything he had there was nothing left in him to give. "If you let me give you the injection we can save your liver and your life, Eric."

"Fuck my life," he said, turning and striding out of the lab away from the harpy who was not done yelling yet.

"You know I'm right! I'll be here waiting when you are man enough to admit it, Northman _!" I need a drink_ , he thought as he continued to his office, her jabs echoing in his mind. _For my age? For my age?_ _Fuck her thirty year old aggravating ass! I'm eighty-four fucking years old and I can still beat the ass of any man I know! I barely look more than fifty, thanks no doubt to my supernatural ancestor._

 _You're really still vain_ , he asked himself?

 _Yes, I fucking am_ , he admitted as he came closer to the sweet quiet sanctuary of his office and his bottle of whiskey. Then the thing he hated more than anything else happened, his voice of reason surfaced, playing referee between his ego and his id.

 _She's right you know. You do need to take better care of yourself. They still need you even if Warlow never surfaces again, the damage is done. They need you to help them heal the mess he left behind_.

This only made him angrier. If he wasn't careful, if he didn't get a drink soon the guilt he kept under a tight rein was going to ooze out through the cracks of his reasonableness. It was his fault she was dead. She died to save his miserable life.

 _Yes, and you are doing such an amazing job of making that sacrifice meaningful. Asshole._

 _Yeah, but I am still a_ pretty _asshole. A few gray streaks, a few lines in my face but other than that I look like I did the day she met me._

 _You really want to go there? You want to remember the first time you saw the Princess?_

 _No! I don't. I want a drink, not a walk down agony lane._ His hand touched the door, almost there when his bleeding psyche kicked him right in the balls. _It didn't end when 500K13 left. You have an obligation to-_

"No!" he bellowed into the empty hallway, his voice echoing through the underground corridors, a ghost of his inner turmoil. "No more obligations!" He turned the doorknob with a hard jerk and threw the door open slamming it against the wall. He took a step into the room and then came to a halt, his clenched jaw opening and hanging there while his brain worked to process what his eyes were showing him.

"Uh-oh! Somebodies been sittin' in your chair," Warlow intoned from behind Eric's desk, his feet propped up, hands behind his head. "And he's still here!" Warlow chuckled at his own wit while Eric reached for his gun that he kept strapped to his side even inside the compound. He was fast, but Warlow could teleport. A moment later the gun was thrown out into the hall, the door closed tightly and Eric was sitting in his chair while Warlow leaned down over his shoulder. "Well, if the chair means that much to you, you can have it." Eric growled, his hands clenching, Warlow put his hands on Eric's shoulders massaging them a moment as he made calming sounds.

"It's all right, Eric. Really it is. I promise." He let out a long sigh behind Eric and then leaned down to speak directly into his ear again. "I have some good new and I have some bad news. Which do you want first?" Eric didn't answer him.

"Ok, good news first then. I'm going to give you something you want more than anything else in the world. You ready?" Not waiting he reached down and cut into Eric's thigh with a knife that seemed to appear out of thin air. Eric hissed, and then he screamed as Warlow pressed on the wound working something deep into Eric's leg. The pain was electric, but faded a moment later when Warlow muttered a spell and closed the wound as though it had never been.

"I'm going to take you to the woman you _love_. That's the good news." Warlow made a gesture that Eric caught in the corner of his eye. His office door opened and two Dark Fae came in with a man struggling between them.

"Jesus!" Eric said, too surprised to remember that he was supposed to be quiet. The brujo had been the witch that opened the portal for 500K13 to return to 1981. Eric got a sinking feeling in his chest that he knew what the bad news was going to be.

"Yes," Warlow purred behind him sounded delighted. "The witch that opened the time portal. We're going take a trip. Hope you pack light?" _Oh, God_ , Eric thought, his stomach doing a flip. "So, now to the bad news, though for me it's still more good news! It's all about perspective you know?" He jerked Eric's chair around so that they were facing each other.

"We're going back because killing her once was just not enough for me. It felt so fucking good that I need to do it again, and I need you to _watch_. I need you to _cry_. I need you to _scream_ because as good as it was to kill that betraying bitch, it was only _perfect_ because you were there to see it."

"No!" Eric grabbed for Warlow, pushing him and beginning to rise from the chair. Warlow cast another dark spell that froze Eric in mid-rise. Even his power of speech and his screams of denial were frozen in his throat.

"Yes!" Warlow said, clapping his hands with glee. "When the vampire told me I could kill her again I thought to myself, how is the world so good to me? I mean really? Sure, I lost the war to you, but this… _this_ more than makes up for it, I think. Don't you?" Warlow shoved Eric's frozen body to the floor and took his seat again behind the desk. "Cause this time I'm going to kill her slow…make her beg…make her confess what she did to me. What she did to Daletheon! This time, oh this time will pay for all."

A silent tear slipped down Eric's cheek as he lay on the floor frozen by dark magic. It may have been a tear of joy to think he would see her again, and it may have been a tear of pure remorse born from the belief that he would fail his love one more time.


End file.
